Phil Mongredien 

Jane’s Addiction: The Great Escape Artist – review

Eight years since their last album, Perry Farrell's band shows little sign of growing old gracefully, says Phil Mongredien
  
  


Despite the involvement of TV on the Radio's studio wiz Dave Sitek, this first album in eight years is still recognisably Jane's Addiction: a bombastic take on art-rock underpinned by Dave Navarro's virtuoso guitar work. There's nothing here to match the wildly brilliant ambition of their late-80s/early-90s peak, but "Underground" packs a hefty punch, while frenetic closer "Words Right Out of My Mouth" sounds like an ornithophobic Stooges. They come unstuck on the workmanlike "Ultimate Reason", and lyrics about " smoking till four, five or six in the morning" suggest 52-year-old frontman Perry Farrell is reluctant to grow old gracefully, but those are minor grumbles.

 

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