Ritual de lo habitual by Jane's Addiction

Ritual de lo habitual, Jane's Addiction's second studio album, hit the racks on Warner Bros. on August 21, 1990, its Spanish title translating to "Ritual of the Usual", which is a sly joke for a record that sounds like nothing else on the shelf. Dave Jerden co-produced, and he captured a band playing as if the room were on fire and the only exit was straight through the amps.

The songs swing between two moods. "Stop!" and "Been Caught Stealing" are all nervy funk and clanging, swaggering guitar, the kind of sound that makes a crowd move before it knows why; "Been Caught Stealing" in particular struts with a grin you can hear. Then the album stretches out and gets strange and tender, with "Three Days" sprawling out like a slow-burning epic and "Classic Girl" drifting by on a woozy, romantic haze. Alternative rock and alternative metal both claim it, and it earns both labels without settling for either.

It was a hit where it counted: top 20 on the Billboard 200, half a million copies gone within a month, and eventually double platinum in the U.S. Critics took to it then and keep taking to it now, and it sits beside its predecessor, Nothing's Shocking, as a cornerstone of the genre. It was also a farewell of sorts. The band broke up in 1991 before cutting another studio record, making this the last with bassist Eric Avery, though he'd return many times after. Their next studio album would be Strays.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.