The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Jane's Addiction

[#] Nothing's Shocking (1988)

Yep, sure are naked ladies.

Reviewed November 11, 2021

(This is an album that was previously covered on the Rediscovering! Click the link in the table to read my first impressions, or read on for how they might have changed.)

Perennial 90s radio rock favorites here in the States, highly respected, one of the artists on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All Time list—and I find Jane's Addiction's reputation slightly hyperbolic. Nothing's Shocking is a not-bad collection of 80s hard-rock-as-sound-exploration tunes with singer Perry Ferrell's sex-as-spirituality lyrical obsessions (alongside Ted Bundy and pissing on himself in the shower) over top. It's recorded big and clean with huge pneumatic drums and Dave Navarro's flashy, though not especially evocative, guitar solos, the band is tight, and they do occasionally hit on a good song—just not as often as they frankly should. I don't know if it's filler or an issue with sequencing, but your record probably shouldn't start four songs in.

On the positive end of things, the catchier louder songs ("Mountain Song", "Pig's in Zen") are the mindless fun that hard rock should be, and of their weirder ambitions, the gorgeously pulsating ode to nudity "Summertime Rolls" accomplishes in six minutes what they spend dozens of minutes trying elsewhere. Eric Avery, bassist and songwriter, is the key to all this—you can trace every good riff and bassline back to him. It's a shame more of the record couldn't be like the acoustic singalong "Jane Says". Not just its best chorus, but also its most compelling story, a sympathetic look at an addicted prostitute always on the cusp of fending off her demons. Otherwise, the only reason it's not all that shocking is because it's not all that interesting.

Essential:	"Mountain Song", "Summertime Rolls", "Jane Says"
Quintessential:	"Ted, Just Admit It..."
Non-Essential:	"Ocean Size"
Rating:
Further listening:	Nothing's Shocking's Rediscovering entry