Jane’s Addiction
Live Album by Jane’s Addiction
Released 15 May 1987
Alternative Rock
Produced by Mark Linett / Jane’s Addiction
Rating – 5/10
The sound of rock going native in 1987.
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I was initially going to write a ‘worst to best’ article on Jane’s Addiction, which then became a retrospective of the albums released prior to their first breakup, which has now simply become a review of the band’s first record, their self-titled 1987 live album.
Despite the California band’s impact, talent, and liberating style of performance, they’ve never been the band for me, as I discovered whilst properly listening to their output. Their intended trippiness – if you excuse the pseudoword – is often overshadowed by loudmouth, cock rock overtones, stupidly sexualised, musically riding the rock n roll lifestyle without any subtlety. That said, I can see why others like them, but if I had gone through with a ‘worst to best’, the top spot would’ve just gone to the album I dislike the least, rather than something that gives me genuine pleasure.
To quickly discuss those early albums, listening to Nothing’s Shocking is a mind-numbing experience for me; proto-grunge hard rock, an angry quest for anthems, fulfilled but lost to the concept of aging whilst including as many wince-inducing Robert Plant impressions as possible. Ritual De Lo Habitual, on the other hand, is happily weird. I’m not too into it, but it represents Jane Addiction’s brand of hard rock spirituality well; even at its most rocking, there’s either a hallucinogenic absurdity, or dazed meditation, so the experience feels both unique and bonding.
The live album is similarly indicative, more-so of the band’s generalised sense of liberation, easily picturing a sweaty rock concert with real, rabid transclusion. Still, my thoughts on it are comparable to those of Nothing’s Shocking; it may soak in the sweat of the live experience, but it will blather on occasion, with clear arena aspirations and glorified hard rock wankery, a sub Guns N’ Roses, potentially what Mother Love Bone would’ve moved on from.
As long as I am comparing the band to Guns N’ Roses, I’ll happily secede and say that as early as Trip Away, the record feels much less wound than their style of hard rock. Everything feels detached; the spritely playing, the quickfire vocals. Everything good that can be said about the album can be said about 1%, which is one of the best examples of Dave Navarro and Eric Avery’s skill, interplay, and looseness. The song begins with immediate slack in their respective playing; you can feel those guitars shimmy.
But it is also a style that turns Velvet Underground and Rolling Stones tunes (Rock & Roll / Sympathy For the Devil) into cheesy messes – the latter less-so, more fake spiritual ‘please tell me I’m interesting’ type stuff, complete with the odd Mick Jagger impression on Perry Farrell’s part, a slight deviation from his usual throaty weaponization.
Its recurring genre descriptor is pre-grunge, a particularly sleepy pre-grunge that lacks life on I Would for You. The trend continues through the album’s midpoint; a grainy feel on My Time, like something you can feel in your eye, implemented further by a folk-like harmonica. Jane Says crosses pre-grunge with the tone of a Led Zeppelin deep cut, all about a heroin addict, with the strained screams and African drums that make it the most noteworthy of the album – definitely feels more outdoorsy than its studio version, and less vocally grating.
The album succumbs to the pitfalls of a permissive, ‘born to be wild’ mindset. Farrell laughs off the n-word with his white fanbase on Whores, the provocateur’s “lol, you’re offended” of its time, whilst combining butt rock and cock rock. Pigs in Zen lies about there being something outrageous about screaming “I just wanna fuck”, even if it does apply to the song’s political narrative – just kind of ironic that it’s about laziness.
I’ll give it its due credit; the mood is as infectious as whatever is causing Perry Farrell to sound so constipated. There is a ritualistic aesthetic to much of the tracklist, particularly finale Chip Away, but there are also a number of tropes and bad habits that overcrowd the genuine creative seamlessness Jane’s Addiction provide.
Best track – 1%.
Weakest tracks – Whores – Rock & Roll.
Rating – 5 out of 10
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