Unlike most musician gurus who could accurately be called artrock entrepreneurs – and who have often been accused of self-indulgence – Perry Farrell isn't interested in weirdness for weirdness' sake. Whether playing cockeyed Led Zeppelin-influenced post-punk with Jane's Addiction, annoying record retailers with his notquite-pornographic cover art or founding the global teen love-in known...

As the shaman of agonized art metal, first fronting Jane's Addiction and now Porno for Pyros, Perry Farrell makes discomfiting Beat poetry out of the blips that cross the screen of his unsavory imagination. It's not enough to point out that drugs, seamy sex and despair are among his favored motifs – in themselves, these subjects are merely the standard currency of pop emotion. But in Farrell'...