Perry Farrell started out as the most engaging guy who ever hit you up for change. It wasn't just his wiry, damaged looks and a voice that sounded like rent tissue; this guy had stories to tell, about what he saw on the streets, the drugs and hookers, the sound of gunshots and polyglot arguments. Then he'd get in his own head, and spill his wild theories-- sex is violence! Jesus enjoyed a good menage-a-trois every now and again! You can piss in the shower! On yourself!-- and fantasies about the mountains and deserts he'd probably never seen. If you drove in from the 'burbs and met this guy, he'd tell you things you'd never imagined-- but the whole time, he just wanted your money.
The three albums that Jane's Addiction cut, from their commercial breakthrough in '88 to their sudden breakup in '91, placed them solidly as one of the great bands of their time. Farrell partnered with star lead guitarist Dave Navarro-- a fellow metal drama queen-- and the stellar rhythm section of Stephen Perkins on drums and bassist Eric Avery: you could send them out on reconnaissance and know they'd come back. Not only did the band help start the "alternative rock" era and revive great hard rock on the major labels, but their fusion of metal, goth, punk-funk-grooves and art-rock showed a breadth and power close to none other than Led Zeppelin-- a band whose greatness they scraped with their artistic and commercial pinnacle, Ritual de lo Habitual.
And then it was over. Without dwelling on every solo project and spinoff band, you can argue that each new album was safer and duller than the one before. Farrell's Porno for Pyros made him tame and serviceable, as the one-time street threat became the professional concert promoter behind Lollapalooza. With his exotic electronica record Songs Yet to Be Sung, he'd finally made it out to the desert, even if he was too straight and cleaned-up to make anything of it. The others didn't fare much better, but aside from a one-off reunion tour (with Flea on bass), the band had been inactive for over a decade when they got back together-- with Chris Chaney replacing Avery-- to record Strays and revive Lollapalooza, which they're currently headlining. Again.
If you're an old fan you might stop cold when you hear the band's new sound. I'll just be direct here: Jane's Addiction have embraced the stainless steel of nu-metal. That said, the old band is recognizable-- Farrell even shouts "HERE WE GO!" to kick it off-- but now they're tight, clean and less dynamic; some tracks sound slick enough to fit in a movie about street-racing sports cars. And who thought Farrell's voice would fit the bold, basic hard rock of the single "Just Because"?
But let's assume none of that bugs you. They went modern, and sometimes they sound like the music your little brother listens to because he's still scared of your records-- but they still knock aside pretty much anything else on commercial rock radio today. The performances are ferocious. Farrell sounds completely committed, pushing more out of his voice than you'd think it could give him. Navarro's leads fly by so often he barely pauses to point them out. Producer Bob Ezrin (Kiss, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd) deserves credit for catching (or generating) all the excitement in this date, even if the perfection is unnatural: the finishing touches are immaculate, from the light use of keyboards to the occasional choir and horn section, all layered barely above the surface.
"Hypersonic" is a dizzyingly tight piece of metalcraft that screeches to a giddy finish; "True Nature" and "Wrong Girl" echo the segues and moody sections of past Jane's tunes, while "Superhero", the most cussing (and probably my favorite) song, acts as traditional mid-album sass-swagger, with its catchiest hooks. They sequenced the most creative songs around the clichéd hard rock of "Price I Pay" and "To Match The Sun", but unfortunately, the album's strengths stop at its construction. Strays lacks what what made the band great in the first place: believable songs and lyrics. According to interviews, the band wrote this material in the studio, so it's not surprising that none of the songs sound like they were burning to be written-- or remembered.
The chorus of "Superhero" and the Zep-riffs of "Wrong Girl" don't excuse the forgettable hooks and by-the-numbers hard rock that fill most of the record. The problem isn't that they didn't write a new "Jane Says", it's that none of these songs can touch any of the material from the first three records. The dynamics-- the bass-led segues and sudden avalanches of sound, the hooks and stylistic extremes-- are simply absent. Strays boasts the band's career-worst dog, the ballad "Everybody's Friend", with an acoustic guitar part that won't be played in dorm rooms across America, and groaner lines like: "Men of peace/ Men of war/ Tell me, who knows more?" And that's more colorful than the kitchen magnet verse on the other songs. Still, as if knowing this, Farrell whizzes through and preferentially emphasizes the timbre of his voice over what he's saying: the lyrics have gotten wordier, yet none of them sound like they matter.
It's hard to go from the songs on Ritual that seemed torn from Farrell's guts to this one-dimensional writing, but to be fair, those comparisons ignore that twelve years have passed. Farrell's not the man he was-- and nobody wants to hear a fortysomething sing about living clean and studying the Torah. He's in a different life: he's done letting us live vicariously through his mania. Judging from Strays, he and the band aren't out to add to the significance of their earlier work; they take the momentous quality of their reunion momentum and aim for the ages. At least they want to rock. For a reunion cash-in, that's saying a lot.
