I’m not sure where I heard Jane’s first. It definitely would have been Been Caught Stealing, it was MTV all the time and was getting a lot of play in the early 90’s. I remember buying the album it’s off, Ritual de lo Habitual, and I didn’t love it. Side one was far too close to sounding like the Red Hot Chili Peppers for comfort and there were some really boring songs on side two. So it just kind of sat on the shelf and I didn’t listen to it. I have no idea where I got my copy of Nothing’s Shocking. Maybe from my flatmate Tez in Uni? I honestly can’t remember but what I can remember is that it blew my mind. (I have realised that I was very, very wrong about Ritual since then).
I can’t imagine what this album would have sounded like to rock fans in 1988. I know that this is the record that is credited with launching what would become called Alternative Rock in the 90’s but this is years ahead of its time. While all the LA glam bands were singing about how great sex and drugs and rock n roll were, Jane’s were taking a far darker look at the world. This is also an album about sex, drugs and rock n roll, but this is about weird sex, bad drugs and life just being… strange. It feels so out of time for the 80’s but utterly prescient about the future of music.
You can tell from the cover that you’re in for something unusual, but you’d never guess what you’re in for as Up the Beach luls the listener into a false sense of calm before Mountain Song crashes in with some now classic rock action.
Nothing’s Shocking covers a lot of ground musically. Goofy songs like Thank You Boys and Idiots Rule sit alongside much darker tracks, like the horror of Jane Says. A song about Farrell’s ex flatmate and the woman who’s drug problem gives the band its name. It’s such a heartbreakingly mundane story of abuse and addiction that It never feels like it’s judging. Just documenting a life being lost. Somehow the band managed to make it an album highlight.
I’m not sure the world needs songs about serial killers but Ted Just Admit It is one of the best. (Dead Skin Mask by Slayer is obviously the best) and has a sample from one of Bundy’s last interviews. It’s a surprisingly pretty song and Eric Avery’s bass line holds the whole thing together. The slow build to the noisy crescendo is like a storm breaking, and fits the mood of the song perfectly.
But all of this sits side by side with songs like SummerTime Rolls. In my twenties I’d daydream that when I settled down with a partner, it would be someone who would make me feel like this song sounds. It’s such a delicate love song in the midst of all the weirdness.
This album was a sleeper hit and that was in no small part because of the cover. Most music shop chains wouldn’t carry the album and MTV wouldn’t show the video for Oceansized because of the nudity in the video. Bands really did like shooting themselves in the foot for artistic integrity, but maybe that’s something music has given up since it lost its value in a post Napster world. But that’s a very different conversation and not one for this post. Saying all that I’ve had to use the censored cover or social media removes it, so the art is still causing problems.
Reading up on the album for writing this, it seems that reviewers thought that this was a band taking the torch from Led Zeppelin which seems as wrong a take as I can imagine. There might be guitar heroics but I can’t think of anything as far from the hard rock pose of 70’s rock. This was the birth of the 90’s and it feels more like an incoming asteroid than a band aping 70’s rock dinosaurs.
https://lynkify.in/album/nothings-shocking/Qt5pYaCa
The ways of exile 