COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
The angry, pumped-up sound of Jane’s Addiction began less than two years ago, when singer Perry Farrell walked away from PSI-COM, the dissonant gloom ’n’ doom combo he was fronting at the time. Although PSI-COM had an independent record that was slowly climbing the college radio charts, the atmosphere surrounding the band had grown much too weird for Farrell.
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
The angry, pumped-up sound of Jane’s Addiction began less than two years ago, when singer Perry Farrell walked away from PSI-COM, the dissonant gloom ’n’ doom combo he was fronting at the time. Although PSI-COM had an independent record that was slowly climbing the college radio charts, the atmosphere surrounding the band had grown much too weird for Farrell. With friend and bassist Eric Avery, he put together a new band, searching for a louder, tougher groove. Backed by Avery’s tense bass throbs, Steve Perkin’s relentless drums and the alternately hard and delicate guitar work of David Navarro, Farrell now sings passionately about the simple anguish of human relationships with a lot less gloom.
Although Warner Brothers has just signed them—in essence an acknowledgement of Jane’s solid and growing underground popularity in Los Angeles—the band’s power has so far been best displayed onstage. Typically, Perkins grimaces over his beat-up drum kit, pounding out an overpowering musical backbone, while Farrell sings in brain-curdling screams, frantically shaking his dreadlocks like some spastic Medusa.