Music review: Jane's Addiction, Barrowland, Glasgow - 'they burned briefly but brightly'

With just four albums across four decades and a revolving door line-up, Jane’s Addiction are the cult rockers who coulda been stadium contenders had they not been distracted by other “pursuits”. The winners, however, were the capacity crowd at Barrowland, communing with their idols in relatively intimate surrounds.

Just as their fellow rock shamen Killing Joke kicked the intensity up a notch with the return of original bassist Youth to the fold, there was something alchemical in this performance with the classic line-up reunited on tour for the first time since 2010. It was there from the moment that Dave Navarro unleashed that idiosyncratic pagan punk metal guitar sound on Up the Beach and frontman Perry Farrell let rip with his ecstatic rock yelp. Guru-like, he assured the crowd that “this bullshit that's been happening, it's going to come to an end”.

Garbed like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, Farrell is the band’s resident mystic. Others might prefer to place their faith in the extraordinary athletic drumming of the turbo-charged engine room that is Stephen Perkins, driving the whole operation with wingman bassist Eric Avery adding inherent funkiness to the raw rock power.

They burned briefly and brightly, with a one-hour set majoring on their earliest era-defining material from the albums Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual, but there is new material in the works with Imminent Redemption fitting the sky-scraping vibe.

The frenetic pace dropped momentarily for an audience singalong to Jane Says before they roared back with an incendiary encore of Mountain Song.

Farrell parried disappointment at the announcement of their final number, promising “we'll make it a good one”. He was as good as his word, leading piledriving epic Three Days and, bonus of bonuses, a feral rendition of Been Caught Stealing.