Track Listing

Rexall (4:00) Hungry (3:33) Sunny Day (4:36) Mourning Son (4:03) Everything (4:31) Not for Nothing (5:26) Avoiding the Angel (4:27) Very Little Daylight (4:11) Venus in Furs (4:29) Slow Motion Sickness (5:29)

Screenshots from "Rexall"

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Lyrics

Read them at Dave's personal site - www.6767.com.

Reviews

Uncomfortably Numb
by Christopher O'Connor
sonicnet.com, © 2001

Dave Navarro, the guitarist who gave Jane's Addiction their distorted resonance and, for an album, cranked up the Red Hot Chili Peppers, makes uncomfortable music on his solo debut, Trust No One. These 10 songs are a mess, but they leave the impression that songcraft wasn't at the heart of this undertaking. Navarro sounds like he's happily (or is that miserably?) having a very public nervous breakdown. "I want to taste your saliva/ I wish that you were my daughter/ I wish I was your father," goes one lyric on the twisted techno rocker "Everything". And the droning "Very Little Daylight" confesses, "I never wish myself upon you, but I cut myself trying not to." Dave Navarro's solo debut may not be pop, but it's commendable art.

Such a worldview probably won't win Navarro a spot on TRL. Next to a pop gem like "Been Caught Stealing," the music here - produced by programmer Rich Costey - is more than a little out there. But it's commendable art, a work of near-ruthless experimentation. Navarro takes his music in surprising directions: he uses Middle Eastern rhythms on several songs, as in the psychedelic crescendo of album-opener "Rexall". Drum machines, synthesizers and studio effects run counter to acoustic guitars. And the album's most interesting stuff is pure noise. "Sunny Day", for instance, sounds like conventional, angsty, mid-'90s radio rock, until the song swerves into 30 seconds of woozy strings, drum pounding and falsetto mumbling: "Look at some friends of mine/ I used to call them friends," Navarro cries, or at least something close to that. Other spots find him playing his amazing brand of guitar solely for the sake of the jam.

So Trust No One apparently marks the end of Dave Navarro's pop star days and the beginning of his Jekyll and Hyde phase. Is he the sicko who howls "Starfuck me, baby!" on the scorcher "Not for Nothing"? Or the wuss who sings "Alone and nothing/ Thought I had something/ To ease the pain of hurting you" on the folky "Slow Motion Sickness"? Only Navarro knows for sure - and the bet here is that he's having a blast making his audience squirm.

Dave Navarro - Trust No One
by Clifford J. Corcoran
Alternative Press Magazine, © August 1, 2001

Personality-free solo debut by venerated alt-nation axe-slinger. Rated 6 out of 10.

Those who have been anticipating Dave Navarro's solo album for the 10 years since Jane's Addiction called it quits, or even for the five-odd years since Navarro's single-album stint with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, are bound to be disappointed by the decidedly characterless nu-metal drones that comprise the bulk of Trust No One. There is no waving of the alternative-nation flag or 21st-century Jane's updating going on here. Rather, Navarro is following a formula of soft verses - generally strummed guitar over electronic percussion - alternated with surging nerf-guitar choruses that split the difference between Tool and the most recent Stone Temple Pilots album.

While Navarro is distinguished enough as a musician that the songs on Trust No one grow catchy over time, the absence of both a strong personality and the emotional content that seems to have been Navarro's goal remains. Blame Navarro's singing. Although pleasant and in key, Navarro's voice lacks the strength necessary to provide the emotional punch his songs seem to require. Attempts at the harrowing, disturbing or kinky (Navarro offers a bland cover of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" and conjures numerous Oedipal longings in his own lyrics) fall flat, leaving things literally in Navarro's hands. Sadly, Navarro for once resists his natural impulse for masturbatory guitar playing, resulting in a competent but both initially and ultimately disappointing album.