453 - Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual

This album played a huge part of the soundtrack to my senior year in high school. I loved this tape! Ritual de lo Habitual very easily divides into two halves. The first half is a collection of uptempo rock songs that could easily get airplay...with some editing of the lyrics. The second half is about 30 minutes long and 25 of those 30 minutes are taken up by three epic songs with a palate cleanser at the end.

One of the most distinctive things about Jane's when they came out was their use of echo and sustain on guitars AND vocals. Perry actually used an analogue echo box attached to his mic during live performances. His voice was an instrument he manipulated with his body and further controlled with the echo box, toying with the duration and decay knobs as part of the performance. This echo is put to superb use on many songs, but I'm particularly fond of the delay used with the poem Perry recites at the beginning of "Three Days" (which actually continues into about a third of the way into the song, coming to the surface between verses).

Ritual's songs aren't produced to create a Spector-like Wall-of-Sound as much as curtains of sound. This is an album that really rewards wearing headphones. Listening carefully, you can hear sometimes as many as 4 or 5 layers of guitars with each layer rising to the surface and receding to the background. Dave loves guitar solos and every song (but "Of Course") features some amount of intense, flamboyant shredding. It is a air guitar player's dream.

"Three Days" is like great sex - the tempo varies, there's a lot of hooping and hollering at the end, and it lasts longer than 10 minutes. No, seriously! The song starts out with Perry reciting a poem, talking of him preparing for a sex-filled visit. The bass comes in and rolls along; not thumping or driving, just a steady roll. The guitars come in and do their best to just barely make a sound. The necking and kissing has begun. When Perry begins singing, he's soft, but his volume starts to build with each passing stanza. With the declaration of "Shadows of the morning light, shadows of the evening sun, until the shadows and light were one," the guitars pick up their intensity, soon the drums start driving the rhythm and the guitars morph into waves of sustain and echo as Perry continues his singing. As Perry starts talking about "All of us with wings!" things build more and then, "GO!" the drums go tribal and Dave starts unleashing his first guitar solo that soars and dives...has a moment of calm...and then the shredding begins again until the guitar's sustain starts to fade and the drums/percussion takes the forefront (a moment I've often imagined as a drum corps of 50 people entering the venue) while the guitars shift to more of a Black Sabbath-type chugging. "Everything she says!" Perry screams as the instruments come crashing back into action again and the lyrics continue. There's another moment of soft strumming that reminds me a little of Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins, before another burst of explosions. "One, two, three, four!" causes another softening and lull...before another (and final) explosion of guitars with Perry yelping and hollering in the background. After the guitar solo wraps up, the song comes to a fast fade. The musicians and listeners collapse in bliss.

Why am I craving a cigarette now? ;)

Songs I knew I liked: I love them all, but concede that the songs I enjoy the least are "Obvious" and "Of Course."

Songs I didn't know but now like: My relistening of the album over the past day (and my 3 listens to the album last night with headphones on, lying in bed in the dark) made me appreciate "Three Days" and "Then She Did" some more.

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: See the "Songs I knew I liked" for the answer on this, too.