janesaddiction.org

Washington Post
August 20, 1993
Edition: FINAL
Section: WEEKEND
Page: n15

PYROS' TECHNIQUES ARE COOLLY ADDICTIVE
Author: Mark Jenkins

IT WAS TIME to move on, Perry Farrell announced when he disbanded Jane's Addiction, but his new outfit, Porno for Pyros, remains in the same neighborhood. On its reasonably solid self-titled debut, the new quartet is neither so frantic nor erratic as was the Addiction, but the bluesy, post-punky sound is similar. The Pyros show a greater interest in jazzy touches and Latin percussion than did their predecessors, but Farrell's yelp and Peter DiStefano's metal-guitar squeal are familiar

So are the various provocations. "Ever since the riots/All I really wanted/Was a black girlfriend," are the opening lines of "Black Girlfriend," while "Packin' .25" extols carrying a handgun and "Pets" liltingly suggests that Earthlings will "make great pets" once superior beings conquer the planet. The only superior being within earshot, though, is not the vociferous Farrell, but drummer Stephen Perkins, who gives "Pets" and other tracks an ingratiating groove.

Mercury Rev's second album, "Boces," also follows an established blueprint -- that of the band's wild-eyed, wide-ranging previous outing, "Yerself is Steam" -- but it's even more amorphous than its predecessor. The opening "Meth of a Rockette's Kick (Ding-Dong the Bee Is Dead)" sets up a characteristic tension by assaulting sugary "ba-ba-bas" with peals of feedback, and "Trickle Down" and "Bronx Cheer," which follow, sort of resemble conventional songs. For too much of the album, though, this upstate New York septet has gone vaguely ambient.

Not all the softer stuff here is mere random burbling and test- pattern hum. With Suzanne Thorpe's guitar-amped flute taking an unusually traditional role, "Downs Are Feminine" is quite pretty. The album's final tracks, though, are barely there, evidence that even these willful weirdos can be merely bland.

PORNO FOR PYROS --

"Porno for Pyros" (Warner Bros.) To hear a Sound Bite from this album, call 202/334-9000 and press 8121.

MERCURY REV --

"Boces" (Columbia). For a Sound Bite, press 8122. Both appearing with Velocity Girl Sunday at Wilmer's Park, Brandywine Road (four miles south of Route 301), Brandywine, Md.; call 202/432-7328

Washington Post
August 24, 1993
Edition: FINAL
Section: STYLE
Page: d6
Author: Nicole Arthur

Sunday night's Porno for Pyros show at Wilmer's Park was about as much fun as you'd expect to have at an event where uniformed medics roamed the crowd verifying that the numerous sprawled bodies in the audience were only temporarily insensate. Darkness had fallen upon the pastoral venue when Lollapalooza mastermind and former Jane's Addiction front man Perry Farrell took the stage with his new band beneath a flag-festooned simulated big top

A ballerina twirled across the stage as the band opened with "Orgasm," a strident ode thereto that aptly introduced what followed. Nine parts theater and one part music, the Pyros' show cast Farrell as master of ceremonies at a multimedia sideshow. Smoke, color and light framed platforms upon which circus performers ("the world's tallest hermaphrodite," for one) cavorted and various mini-dramas unfolded, including the much-discussed striptease by two women auditioning for an "erotic circus."s sophomoric politicizing. And no one seemed to notice how absurd his crude between-songs comments about women made his righteous anti-discrimination diatribe seem. Appropriately, what rang resoundingly true was Farrell's spirited defense of capitalism