Jane's Addiction: "Whores"

Every time something new comes out about Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction’s NINJA (get it?!?!!?) tour comes out, it just makes it look more and more like the Unstoppable Awesome Survivors Festival 2009. Plus the not-huge band happens to be Street Sweeper, a righteous collaboration between Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and the Coup’s Boots Riley. If I’m writing like a teenager, it’s because this gets me giddy like one.

In the fashion of the hero of modern media that Trent Reznor has become, the NINJA 2009 tour sampler, featuring two tracks from each of the three acts, is available as a free, no-DRM digital download. While the new tracks from Nine Inch Nails and Street Sweeper are great, the really exciting material here is in the Jane’s Addiction material: “Chip Away” and “Whores,” both songs from their semi-live, self-titled debut 1987 release that appear here as studio recordings for the first time. Further, this is first studio material since 1990’s Ritual De Lo Habitual to feature the complete, original lineup, including bassist Eric Avery.

Since Avery’s back in town, it’s only appropriate that “Whores,” featuring one of his funkiest and most twisted bass lines, appears. The original version of “Whores” captured Jane’s Addiction at an early, hungry point in their career; as such, it’s thrilling to hear that these guys can still bang out such a fist-pumpingly excellent and exotic take on it two decades down the road. The studio job, co-produced by Reznor, brings what you would expect: extra punch to the drums, more effects on Perry Farrell’s voice, and some different overdubs from Dave Navarro. Rather than the too-slick job that ruined Jane’s Addiction comeback tracks like 2003’s tin-canned “Superman,” we get a mix that’s certainly more modern, but still infused with the swirls and muck that made the initial Jane’s Addiction output such a mysteriously captivating entity.

Hearing Farrell shout, “I love them whores they never judge you / Now what can you say when you’re a whore?!” still inspires tingles of wild-side sleaze and intrigue, even all these years of LA dirt pretenders down the line (no thank you, Shwayze). Despite all those limp side projects, reality TV, and oodles of drugs, these four characters get together and it still sounds like the real deal.