Jane’s Addiction
“Up the Beach”
from Nothing’s Shocking
Warner Bros/WEA, August 1988
This right here is almost everything Jane’s Addiction did well: a gooey Eric Avery bassline, a huge Zeppelin Over Sunset power-chord onslaught, Stephen Perkins’s super-produced pounding, and Perry Farrell’s otherworldly wailing, equal parts vulnerable and Valhalla, introduced by that perfectly intimate intake of breath. Atop this, Dave Navarro (who was the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy before he turned to evil) constructs these gargantuan spires of guitar, effortless edifices that majestically tower into the atmosphere and cascade back down into the surf. The funny thing is that the lyrics simply say “Here we go now–home,” but there’s nothing homey about this music at all–it’s music of epic adventure and grandiose, self-consciously exotic beauty. The only conclusion that we’re left to draw is that this is home for Jane’s Addiction, a whole new concept of home constructed by Perry and company through sheer willingness to be weird outsiders and artists and hedonists. This song isn’t a day at the beach at all, it’s them welcoming you to their place and saying “Here, let me give you the grand tour.”
Oh mm mm now I have to listen this whole album. One of the “big” albums for me in high school, especially as I transitioned from listening to NO rock (christian youth) to Jane’s Addiction and Soundgarden in the 9th grade. Memories!
Although I always thought what you refer to as “music of grand adventure” always struck me as kind of elegiac, like the big anticlimactic coda part of a film score, the pieces have fallen back to earth and the characters dust themselves off and take stock. Part of the reason this will always be the one true great Jane’s Addiction album (for me) is the way this beginning contextualizes all the goofy stuff that follows, creating a a broader whole; as opposed to their later stuff that was just, well, you know.