Ritual de lo Habitual

Jane's Addiction

album cover

An Alt-Rock Catalyst

The Los Angeles quartet Jane's Addiction blazed into alternative rock consciousness in 1988, with songs that suggest a teenage riot in progress, sung by a concept-minded lead singer, Perry Farrell, whose default singing voice is a strident banshee wail.

That first salvo (on the band's major-label debut, Nothing's Shocking) prepared the cool-hunting segment of the rock audience for Ritual de lo Habitual, a feast of glinting guitar collisions and hurtling, almost frantic rhythms. Of the many mile markers in the history of alternative rock, this stands among the most significant. Although it would be another year before the alt-rock nation became a commercial force with the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, Ritual helped create the conditions for change. It proved that an extreme version of rock rebellion, one built on ear-splitting dissonances, could sell lots of copies. Most of Ritual either starts at the sound of panic or ends up there, but the music is rarely just agitation for its own sake. The journeys involve jarring changes in meter and mood: "Three Days" evolves from drifty lethargy into backbeats of lacerating intensity.

Although Farrell attracted the lion's share of the attention—rarely has such an abrasive voice been so seductive—his delivery depended on the sure support of Jane's rhythm section. Most musicians who aligned themselves with punk avoided bringing much of the past into their attack, but not guitarist Dave Navarro: On the band's biggest hit, "Been Caught Stealing," he generates a tightly wound rhythm guitar line that descends directly from "Sex Machine"–era James Brown. Those canny connections to the past went largely undetected in the frenzy, but they're one reason Ritual remains an all-consuming experience.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1990, Warner Bros.
Key Tracks: "Three Days," "Been Caught Stealing," "Then She Did . . ."
Catalog Choice: Nothing's Shocking
Next Stop: Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream
After That: Mercury Rev: Boces
Book Page: 392