Pop Reviews : Farrell’s Pyros Still a Work-In-Progress

Perry Farrell might have been better off waiting a bit to formally unveil his new band, Porno for Pyros. The brief (45-minute) set the band played Saturday on the shore of Castaic Lake wasn’t really much more revealing than the even shorter sets it has done at recent benefit concerts.

And with the unique locale--a gorgeous outdoor alternative to the usual Los Angeles-area venues--adding to the aura of an Event, the fans who trekked up Interstate 5 seemed to be left a little underwhelmed when Farrell sheepishly announced, “We really don’t have that many songs,” just as a sense of the group’s direction and Farrell’s latest vision seemed to be taking shape.

But if the show wasn’t exactly what the Perrystock fans might have hoped for, it was a rare and worthwhile chance to see a work-in-progress by a constantly fascinating and challenging figure.

At the beginning, the show seemed further proof that Farrell broke up Jane’s Addiction last year over personalities, not music. The first few songs could easily have come from his former band, in no small part thanks to the intense, precise, polyrhythmic drumming of Stephen Perkins, who anchors Porno as he did Jane’s.

But later numbers demonstrated a wider range of textures and techniques than Jane’s ever attempted, with guitarist Peter Distefano and bassist Martyn Lenoble both displaying notable versatility, if not yet distinctively personal stamps.

Several Porno songs had almost delicate sonic qualities that were out of Jane’s relatively monolithic range, and one--the curious “We’ll Make Great Pets,” apparently about social/political submissiveness--sounded like a light, poppy single in spite of Farrell’s trademark tuneless caterwaul. The direction that hints at isn’t quite as dramatic a transformation as, say, PiL’s metamorphosis into a pop band, but there is a parallel in that comparison.

Like PiL, in which John Lydon’s surrounding cast is almost irrelevant, it seems clear that the center of attention of anything Farrell will ever do will be Farrell. Saturday’s performance was as it ever was, beginning with Farrell’s startlingly out-of-place attire--with his golden-dyed hair and shiny black leather suit he looked a lot like the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal”-era Lou Reed.

Whether slurring his words as he turned a political message into a sexual exhortation, or groping himself as two topless women danced next to him, Farrell reminded us that his chosen medium isn’t music, it’s spectacle, and that his message is nothing more than his own odd, self-obsessed charisma. But it’s the kind of charisma that can turn even this teaser of a show into a memorable occasion, balancing a nagging feeling that we’ve been had with an addictive curiosity to see what he’ll do next.

Farrell may just be the greatest huckster rock has ever seen.