alternative rock · 1988
Nothing's Shocking
Jane's Addiction
Perry Farrell's yowl and Dave Navarro's guitar turned the sludge of late-'80s Los Angeles into something ecstatic, half funk-metal riot and half acid-tinged art project.
Start with "Jane Says," a barroom lament about a junkie friend that rides two chords and a steel drum instead of the distortion the rest of the record leans on. That refusal to pick one lane is the band's whole method: "Ocean Size" heaves like arena metal, then "Summertime Rolls" drifts on a bassline soft enough to sleep in. It gave a generation of Lollapalooza-era bands permission to be heavy and strange at once, without apology. Two decades on, the record still sounds like a group that never bothered to decide what it wanted to be, and won by not choosing.