blksqul's Full Review: Ritual de lo Habitual by Jane's Addiction
Influential. Overrated. These are the two truths about Jane's Addiction. Spin has been leading the charge casting Jane's Addiction in the most sacred of lights, what with that hagiography a few months back breathlessly considering Jane's Addiction more essential than Nirvana in breaking alternative radio wide open. Um, no. Jane's Addiction will be remembered for "Jane Says," for "Been Caught Stealing" and for "Stop!" Three songs. Look to college radio mainstays like the Cure, R.E.M. (both with plenty more than three memorable radio songs to their credit), hell, even oft unplayed originals from Sonic Youth and the Pixies, for sowing the seeds that allowed Nirvana to be absorbed into the marketplace in the first place. Jane's Addiction plays a part, but please, it's not THAT big.
Yes, Perry Farrell (name derived from a pun on "peripheral") did start Lollapalooza, thereby rocketing lots of fringe bands into mass acceptance, but that is Farrell's doing, not Jane's Addiction's. He captured a moment in time, and capitalized on it. Lollapalooza fell off more and more in the following years, until its much-touted return was eclipsed this year by, of all things, Curiosa. (Robert Smith knows irony) I'm not saying Lollapalooza wasn't important, but even that festival has taken on an air of the sacred when it's still very much fallible and flawed -- just like Jane's Addiction.
Calling out the band as saviors of modern rock is unfair. Because when a band is saddled with the words "massive," "influential," and "classic," you have given the listener a free pass to nod their heads approvingly without ever really getting the album. I'm sure Ritual de lo Habitual is in a lot of people's collections because of its Importance -- but how many of those listeners pull out Ritual more than once or twice a year? How great is an album that nobody listens to urgently, constantly, years in?
Ritual gets four stars. It has some amazing songs, some amazing filler (yes, Jane's Addiction was one of those bands that could make their filler sound amazing), and, unfortunately, almost no cohesion. Let's play a game. Those bands I mentioned above? Compare them to Jane's Addiction, album for album, when it comes to theme. The Cure's albums you can picture by mood and color. R.E.M.'s you can imagine as a vast, changing array of rain, rock, sunlight, highways, airport terminals, and train tracks. Sonic Youth casts about winter and summer, with plenty of nods to fall's decay and spring's rebirth, in their guitar-spaced meltdowns. And the Pixies are like a movie theater burning to the ground, surrealist clips flitting on the screen and through the smoke.
What does Jane's Addiction evoke? A live album debut that features one major standout, Jane Says; a major label follow-up that flies all over the place, coming down the mountain and standing in the shower; Ritual, which uses its time vacillating between textured hard rock and psychedelic slowdowns, throwing out random calls against racism, against drug testing, before memorializing a dead soulmate killed by drug use, then penning a song to Perry's girlfriend; followed by a disc of throwaways; then The New Album. There's no real theme evoked, and that's always been Jane's problem. They have some crazy, wild, unique tunes, but they can't make them gel into a vision. From song to song, the tunes butt up against each other, rather than flow naturally from idea to idea. It's sonic whiplash. Hence, "Jane Says" is played until it loses all meaning, while "Ted, Just Admit It" rots in obscurity, sandwiched between a song about parental neglect and urinating on yourself in the tub.
The album opens in Spanish (read by, I think, Perry's then-girlfriend Casey), proclaiming to the listener that Jane's Addiction, born and raised in Los Angeles, has control of your children, but not to worry, because the band loves them more than you do. It's a memorable opening, and leads into one of Jane's most propulsive tracks, "Stop!" What exactly the song is trying to point out is lost on me, but it's so joyful, trashy and beautiful in equal parts that it doesn't really matter. Dave Navarro tosses off one of the most memorable riffs of his career, while Stephen Perkins keeps expert time, Eric Avery lets his bass lift its head over the edge of the song, peering down, and Farrell tells everyone to shut off their media and hum along with the media. Too strange to not be perfect.
"No One's Leaving" is the first piece of amazing filler. Navarro is able to make his guitar sound like a train crashing into an airplane, Avery and Perkins add a strangely funk rhythm, and Farrell's off in his own world, opening with what sounds like a drug deal masquerading as stickball ("Got a little game and I take it to the park/I don't care who plays/As long as the game is on.") He then turns the song into a simplistic assessment of race, making years of ignorance and hatred seem as easy to conquer as sleeping with someone or kissing them. Farrell's never been a great lyricist. The song's striking moment comes at the end. He keeps saying "All waved" until he starts stuttering and stumbling on the note, showing the fraility, the humanity, behind his pronouncements. Weakness isn't something you usually get in a rock band.
"Ain't No Right" opens with a strange, swampy intro where Perry sings about his sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, while Perkins plays a bottomed-out echo and Avery lurches here and there. It turns into a rant against drug testing, which quickly fades out and turns into a song about pure, unbridled hedonism. You can tell that Jane's knows this material firsthand. It's a shooting rocket, and the way Farrell yelps "There's only pleasure and paaaaain," you know it's heading out to explode. Navarro's claustrophobic lead and the way the song keeps changing pace makes sure of it.
Following this, the second piece of amazing filler in "Obvious," which is Farrell's angry attack against the media for, y'know, reporting on his and the band's drug problems that were, y'know, actually true. The reason this song is filler is it doesn't know when to stop. You realize the point early on, ("Digging something up/Always digging something up") but Farrell, apparently, doesn't think he's said enough on the matter, and drags the song out, without much change in the music, for six minutes. Aside from storming guitarwork from Navarro, and a tinkly piano layer that should have no business being in such a hard-rocking song but fits anyway, "Obvious" is quickly forgotten.
Which is fine, because the standout "Been Caught Stealing" is next. It doesn't fit with anything else on the album (not that anything has so far), but it's one of those songs that gets you to smile, laugh and dance even if you don't want to. It opens with dogs barking a la the Beach Boys Pet Sounds era, but I doubt that Brian Wilson, even during his most drugged out, mentally collapsed days, wrote a joyful ode to shoplifting. (The Smiths did, but that's another influential band's story entirely)
It's one of those songs where the band gels as a unit so well that you can't really pick out the best part of the song. Is it Farrell's gleeful, subversive singing? Navarro's understated, spot-on playing? Perkins merry-go-round percussion? Avery's funky, percussive bass? Answer: all of the above.
We now dip into two songs that, finally, fit together. Perversely, these two tracks, "Three Days" and "Then She Did ..." run together for 20 minutes. I have to hand it to the band, though. They make those 20 minutes count. You might be expecting some severe wank; two horrible, over-the-top pieces that overstay their welcome and jump all over the place. Instead, you get the two haunting standouts of this album, and a taste of where Jane's could have gone if they hadn't broken up for years. It's the closest we'll ever see into the group's heart.
"Three Days" is a slow, measured thing, all high on the fretboard, simple, sleepy percussion, deep in love with words. The song is about Perry, his girlfriend Casey, and his soulmate Xiola Blue (not her real name) sleeping together for a biblical three days, sharing their souls and, sigh, shooting up heroin. It's depicted on the front cover sculpture, photographed for the uncensored version of this album. Behind the music, soft words of poetry flow out to the listener, and in them, you can hear love, and regret. "At this moment, you should be with us, feeling like we do, like you love to, but never will again."
Of course, Perry has a problem with admitting he had something to do with Xiola's death, seeing as he got her hooked on heroin, but that creepy blindspot doesn't ruin the song. In fact, it just gets more gorgeous, full of candles, angels, and "erotic Jesus lays with his Marys." The song, over its length, grows more and more powerful, segueing from gentle picking into slamming drums, overdriven bass and guitars that come down like hail against mirrors, while Farrell calls out "All of us with wings!" amidst visions of spiritual reunion. Where this song ends, silenced, haunted, "Then She Did ..." picks up.
Originally titled "Then She Died ..." the song is a further memoriam of Xiola. This one's quite a bit angrier, but also more sly in its evocation. There's a melody in here that takes a while to pick out, and by then, Farrell's gone from talking of Xiola as an artist who never reached her prime, to shouting out a screaming indictment against the entire situation; against her death. He tries to be pleasant, relating memories of his mother and how she and Xiola are probably up there, talking together, but even his visions of maternal grace lurk with poison.
"Will you say hello to my ma?" Farrell begins. "Will you pay a visit to her?/She was an artist, just as you were/I'd have introduced you to her." Fine. But the music picks up from its subtle slowdown grace into something approaching fire. The lyrics, for their part, grow more gnarled. "She would take me out on Sunday/We'd go laughing through the garbage/She repaired legs like a doctor/On the kitchen chairs we sat on."
Then the penultimate moment, where Farrell can't keep in the sadness, the anger, the following realization: "She was unhappy, just as you were/Unhappy, just as you were/Unhappy! Just as you were/Unhappy! Just as you were!"
Sit with that for a moment. Then prepare yourself for another piece of amazing filler, this one so far against what went before as to be almost obscene, yet so jaunty and bizarre that "Of Course" is going to be a song that you either love or hate. I'm in the former category.
Using a faux-Indian aura, Farrell sings, almost a nursery rhyme, about how it's eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, opening with the memorable "Of course this land is dangerous/All of the animals/Are capably murderous." It then goes into a memory of Farrell's brother, who taught Perry how to slap himself in the face. Somehow, this becomes a spiritual touchstone for young Perry, as he gleefully commands the listener to slap himself in the face. What makes this filler is, agh, it goes on for 7 minutes. Which is still not enough to wipe away the traces of "Then She Did ..."
So "Classic Girl" full-on indulges in them. Opening softly -- Perkins doesn't arrive until about a minute 30 into the song -- it is a haunted love song to Perry's girlfriend, Casey. Of course, as everybody (including Casey) must have known, Perry's real love was Xiola, so this song can't help but effect some of the Xiola melancholy into what should be a joyful song of connection. But you know something's off from the opening moments. What love song, after all, opens with "4:05 in my neighborhood/When shots go off/No one bothers/A pop, and a reply pop/And no reply"? Not exactly the most romantic of circumstances, and a telling detail of disconnection. Farrell tries to bring the song into a brighter sphere, talking of his devotion to Casey and the "dinosaurs on the quilt I wore." But it doesn't erase the ennui and disintegration of the opening verse, and Farrell seems to realize this -- as he closes with "goodnight," we hear one final guitar ring in the distance, and the disc ends.
I really wish I could give this album five stars, because when the band is on -- such as Three Days, Then She Did ... and Classic Girl -- nobody can touch them. Those three songs are the real core of the album. If only Farrell had tapped into that sadness and regret, he could have given us a real classic. Instead, we have an album that tries to mask its regret with rock and filler. Ah, but he did give us "Been Caught Stealing," so I can't begrudge him his moment. Whether four stars or five stars, it's still an album to cherish. And quite unlike slapping yourself in the face.
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