So here we are again. Just one short month after the MTV Birthday bash, and Jane's Addiction are back at Brixton again, this time as part of their hypersonic world tour, this time fuelled by a seemingly hyperactive work ethic : they work hard, they play hard (in every sense of the world), they rock hard.

Sure Jane's Addiction are just a rock band : they’re just bass, and drums, and guitar, and weird otherworldly screeching. But they’re so much more than rock : more than that lumpen, macho cliche of dumb lyrics that think they’re oh-so-clever (much like Bono‘s actually), those token acoustic bits that every metal band puts in to make themselves look deep, and those big clumsy bits of riffage and screaming. Jane's Addiction are so much more : they know the redeeming power of big guitars, and the importance of things like good ideas and beauty.

They know that in order to know love, one must also know hate. To know volume, one must also know silence. Rock. And Roll. Yin. Yang. . Masculine. Feminine. Dark side. Light side. Luke Skywalker. And Darth Vader. Beauty. And The Beast. Rags. And The Riches.

See, Jane's Addiction had ambition : they didn’t want to just rock. Sure, they wanted to rock. But they also wanted to fuck. And to change the world. Abolish slavery*. Destroy the concept of nations. Overturn capitalism.

(* close minded fans will note they once did a tour with the pure aim of taking all the profits to the Third World and freeing thousands of slaves - which in 1998, they did).

Jane's Addiction weren’t about girls,girls,girls, and leather trousers and shouting at the devil. Sure, there was a bit of that - the girls were all addicted to something, the leather trousers were stylish, and the devil? He was called America. And Jane's Addiction were shouting at, not just the devil, but the complacency of the world. Why settle for second best? Why accept the world the way it is, with it’s corruption, its inequality, it’s ugliness? Where idiots rule, and no-one’s leaving.

And what is “No-one’s Leaving” all about? It’s about the fact that this world is the only one we’re likely to live on, where we all need to learn to co-exist, as one, in order to survive. Ain’t nobody leaving. So Perry Farrell, long time Jane's Addiction frontman, fortysomething jaded rockgod and hippie visionary (in so much as he thinks of the human race as one global consciousness corrupted by politics, nationalism, and money), makes plain. Nationalism sucks, and if we learned to live together as one, we too, all of us, would get The Riches.

“The Riches” is one of the pivotal songs in the Jane's Addiction canon. Whilst lyrically Jane's Addiction have shifted radically from the astute social commentary and articulate rage of their earlier records, now their philosophy is that of a global, united consciousness. No longer do they rage against the world, the seek to unify to save us. Perry is our erotic Jesus in leather trousers with guitars. Yowsa.

But it is Halloween. And so, the Brixton Academy is draped in well, millions of drapes. And a fair portion of the crowd sport devil horns, Buckethead masks, Jason Voorhees masks, Pig masks, overalls splattered in fake blood, and plenty of foxy chicks in slightly gothic, slinky, sexy outfits. I know about pain and suffering. And I still want to fuck!

Not an original thought in my head, see...

Girls love Jane's Addiction. Jane's Addiction are probably the only (true) metal band that have near equal cross gender appeal, because they’re not macho dunderheads. They don’t talk about girls, and parties, and how evil women are. Nor do they sing about World Wars, Troopers, Time Travellers, Tailgunners, Harvesters Of Sorrow, or any of that bollocks. Nor are their songs lumpen plods at the same tempo all the way through. Jane's Addiction songs are smart, clever, quiet and loud, strong yet tender, fast and slow, and all things one could honestly always want. Girls love them because they’re not walking macho cliches. Boys love them because they’re not slavishly copying the template of the metal conventions. They’re thinking in a completely different universe.

And as tensions mount and the band are 35 minutes late to come onstage (that is, it’s 10.35pm, and we’re still being fed a diet of crap by a DJ), the room is suddenly filled by literally dozens of massive placards, each bearing the image Winston Chuchill. With a spray painted flourouscent green mohawk. Dozens come swimming into the hall. The lights dim. A roar of endless, trance-inducing drumming. And then, six girls. Six girls wearing black bikinis, police riot helmets, and truncheons. Dancing on stage, to the sound of what sounds like Ice Cube. Great. The room surges with energy. Jane's Addiction next. Nope.

The lights go up again. And we’re treated to a half-volume, inaudible Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song. How much longer is it going to be?

And they play the old songs with as much bite as they ever did. The opening “Up The Beach” (the best song about crab migration during the change of seasons, ever. FACT), a swirling instrumental is the kind of song that sounds like a can-opener. Raw, sharp, powerful and delicate. The frantic “Stop!”, dispatched next in an oddly greatest hits kinda fashion, still sounds like the roar of ocean tides, is an odd celebration of the vibrancy of life with a lyric about the flooding of the world as retribution for man’s sins against the environment. The video features surfers. It all kinda makes sense, I suppose. And it rocks like a bastard. Like they need to do this, not that they like to do this, but they need to. The power of The Spirit compels them.

But after a determinedly retro opening salvo that sees only one song not written in the Eighties in the first half hour, we finally get the meat of their new stuff. Sure, the 15-minute “Three Days”, with it’s frantic, tribal drum solo, the stuttering stop-start reinventions of the tempo changes, and the stellar, wonderful sight of 8000 arms reaching to the sky and chanting “All Of Us With Wings!” is an absolute joy to behold.

And then we’re in the middle of the most amazing take of “Three Days” ever. The drum solo, which is a horrid, frightening progrock turn of phrase, is actually good. Perkins, worlds best drummer ever pounds away at some collossal rhythm , building and building, before the song collapses in on itself, pauses, and all of sudden... “Erotic Jesus! Lays With His Mary’s! Loves His Marys! Bits Of Puzzle! Fitting Each Other!” and it ALL makes sense.

Even if most of the male ‘fans’ here can’t dance or move in time, jump up and down and punch each other in the fast songs, and smoke fags during the new ones.

Not that I’m a snob, but white men ain’t got no rhythm when it comes to dancing. Where’s the sense of release? The sense of losing oneself in a groove, the sense of joy, meditation and transcendance that rhythmical movement can unlock? Ah fuck it. Let’s jump around, smoke fags, throw pints around, and punch people cos they’re playing a fast heavy one.

Dunderheads.

As Perry said, throwing stuff ain’t cool.

A skip, hop, and a jump through the acoustic wonder of “Everybody’s Friend” and the wonderful “Just Because”, as damning a deconstruction of selfishness and capitalist theory as you can get in a modern pop song, and we’re into the New! Improved! Jane's Addiction! (yes, new, improved... instead of raging at the world, Perry wants to save it). And so, “True Nature”, part of Perry’s new, global consciousness worldview, is still the funkiest, rockingest song ever about power and homelessness.

It’s feeling like a list, but it isn’t. It’s a joyous, wicked celebration of life. It’s a way of converting hate and contempt into something positive, using that energy for a force for good, trying to change the world instead of blindly hating it. And sounding like the best metal-jazz-rock-funk band of all time. Fuck. That looks awful on paper. But there is no other way to describe them apart from ambitious. Where other bands reach for a beer, Jane’s reach for the stars. They hope for The Riches, the state of salvation and spiritual unity that is possible within all of us, if we can look beyond the normal control mechanisms of religion and nationality and profits.

Jane Says is a beautiful song. Jane says she can’t hit. But Jane’s Say we can make a beautiful world. If only somehow we could take the power from the idiots that rule. I wish I was Ocean Size. Wish I was coming down the mountain. Wish that vision could made flesh.

Fuck me. Did I tell you they rocked like a bastard? Did I tell you they convinced me that we were all Gods, and that anything was possible? Did I tell you they made me feel as if that good is still a force that can change the world for the better forever? Did I? Good. Music was a poorer place without them.

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