Playing With Fire

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

PERFORMERS: PORNO FOR PYROS

ALBUM: PORNO FOR PYROS

LABEL: WARNER BROS.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Vocalist Perry Farrell continues the wild musical ride he began with his last group, Jane's Addiction.

It's supremely fitting that David Koresh fronted a rock-'n'-roll band because many kids look for the same things from a rock group that they do from a cult: a sense of belonging, a sense of worship and the feeling that what they're doing will drive their parents absolutely crazy. Singer Perry Farrell's previous band, the Los Angeles-based alternative-rock quartet Jane's Addiction, provided fans with concerts of pagan celebration: their music was bursting with guitar-powered Dionysian frenzy and golden calf-esque imagery (Bored with your lives, children? We've got a cow god for you). The group's final album, Ritual de lo Habitual (1990), featured cover art with full- frontal nudity, a song about kleptomania and an 11-minute rock epic that out-zeppelined Led Zeppelin.

But what happens when an alternative-rock band becomes popular with the mainstream? It's a little like having your mother move into the compound with ^ you. There's just something traumatic when the college-radio band you love ends up as background music on Melrose Place. After the critical and commercial success of Jane's Addiction, Farrell wisely sought out new challenges. He founded Lollapalooza, the traveling summer carnival of music that showcases pop's avant-garde (this year it will feature such acts as Arrested Development); he made a low-budget feature film called Gift (out in limited release this year); and, along with former Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins, he created Porno for Pyros.

The group's debut CD starts off with Farrell's screech, "I got the devil in me," and ends with a song in which he gives a woman her first-ever orgasm: "Sit back/ And get yourself relaxed," he soothes. The group's name comes from a fireworks ad that Farrell spotted in a dirty magazine; on the album, the phrase porno for pyros is also used as a lyrical description of last year's L.A. uprising. That kind of juxtaposition -- psychedelic sexuality matched with social commentary -- is the strength of the album. The wild abandon of the imagination is connected with the empirical world. "Ever since the riots/ All I really wanted/ Was a black girlfriend," croons Farrell on one song, a droll commentary on capricious white liberal guilt.

When your main theme is anarchy, how do you mature? Farrell seems to have found an answer. To be sure, Porno for Pyros sounds a lot like Jane's Addiction; Farrell has changed bands, but he hasn't changed his tune. Thematically, however, the new band seems more assured, unafraid to comment on current events. There's also a sense of rhythmic joy about this album. Farrell has long experimented with rock and funk, and on Porno funk wins the day; the songs are buoyed by jubilant urban and third-world percussion. This is music to savor. Sit back and get yourself relaxed.