Album: Jane's Addiction, The Great Escape Artist

They may talk it up as a brave new step forward, but their first album in over eight years can't really be viewed as other than a retrograde move for Jane's Addiction.

Their spiky, iconoclastic sound used to sit uneasily alongside more mainstream rock, but here there's a distinct shift towards the bombastic stadium mode of such as Muse. In places, they even sound like U2, particularly when the charging riff of "Curiosity Kills" hits its stride. The involvement of TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek has introduced Goth and psychedelic synthscapes alongside Dave Navarro's shrill, fizzing guitar riffs, the elements circling each other like caged beasts on tracks like "Twisted Tales" and "Underground", two of several songs here yet again featuring Perry Farrell's tributes to (his own) outsidership.

DOWNLOAD THIS Underground; Twisted Tales