User:Ceoil/Alice

Alice in Chains: Jar of Flies (Columbia)
Deborah Frost, Village Voice, 15 March 1994

THE NEAT TRICK Alice in Chains pulled off a coupla weeks ago when their third EP Jar of Flies (Columbia) zipped to the No. 1 position on Billboard's album chart is not entirely unprecedent-ed, even if the sluggish retail cli-mate that allows nonhousehold names to bumrush the chart tradi-tionally comes later in the season.

Let's not discount novelty appeal (those life-size plastic flies infest-ing the jewelbox are cuter than pet rocks) and budget price, although only in the era of the $100 box set and 70-minute album does 35 minutes of music for $8.99 come off like such a deal. Yet unfamiliar as the band may be to the listeners of Generation W (stands for Woodstock, and whaddya think comes before X?), Alice in Chains did not suddenly arrive through the looking glass.

Bypassing the indie route that eventually put practically every-body else in Seattle on MTV's map, the band was signed by Co-lumbia in 1989, the same year as labelmate Mariah Carey. It's a move that's since paid off in gold (their 1991 EP, SAP) and double platinum (last year's Dirt, their second full-length album). It's a move that's paid off even better for Stone Temple Pilots, Atlan-tic's bestselling rock act last year, whose primary distinction is their uncanny appropriation of Alice in Chains' rhythmic vibe and shav-ing habits.

But Alice in Chains didn't get their break by pledging allegiance to Sonic Youth or calling Henry Rollins for career counseling. Un-like most of the slackers in their neck of the woods, they've never been ashamed to identify them-selves as a metal band. Well be-fore punk broke, they were open-ing for Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne – not unlike Metallica, who grabbed the same ball and ran like hell with it a decade ago. And if punk hadn't broken (or, maybe more to the point, if Nir-vana and Pearl Jam hadn't), Alice in Chains might very well have survived the hazing of the metal road and eventually risen through the ancient fraternal ranks to headline their own arenas today, anyway. But they probably would not be half as interesting.

Robust yodeling, ample pec exposure, and logger fashion statement now insure that Alice in Chains is as sweatily embraced by Eddie Vedder's audience as Eddie Van Halen's. Yet although from inception Alice in Chains played as hard, heavy, and slowly as oth-er Washington Staters (you might have thought somebody'd pollut-ed the water supply with Black Sabbath) their approach was nei-ther as ridiculous as that of the Melvins (who can't stop telling you what a joke they are) nor as ponderous as Soundgarden's (who, rumor has it, have finally figured out how to stop telling you how serious they are).

Last year's Dirt dug up the drugs and dysfunction of every dashed American dream better than any reporter's file from Tonya Harding's hometown. Flies also swarms with lost innocence – ‘Rotten Apple’ is a fairly literal take on the oldest Bible tale. But in ‘Don't Follow’ and ‘Swing on This’, the band stumbles upon the traditional modern American response: once you leave the gar-den, you really don't want to go home again. And in doing so, Al-ice in Chains have liberated them-selves even further, toward the succinct declaration of indepen-dence from any previously articu-lated rock style.

They've also picked up a world-ly new bass player, Mike Inez, who swings mightily – although sometimes at the expense of the drums, which are mixed so low Flies sounds almost unplugged. But the EP format is perfectly suited for spontaneous experi-ments, including trading heavy thunder for chamber music. There, guitarist Jerry Cantrell's increasingly incisive rhythms and soulful leads hoist him high above the grunge heap. As with Nirva-na's recent touring strings, a pre-dominantly female section lends a distinctly antimetal sensibility that also tempers Layne Staley's brute vocal phrasing, maybe Al-ice's weakest link. The harmonies he and Cantrell produce once immediately identified the group's sound (they're also the one way you always can tell Alice in Chains from Stone Temple Pi-lots). Where harmonies, whether sung in parallel or counterpoint, are usually higher than the lead vocal, Alice in Chains' are sung a fourth or fifth below. Yet as the other musicians are stretching their chops, plunging into weird keys and jazzy changes, what was originally a cool idea is beginning to sound like a crude affectation. Still, each time out, these guys have made major leaps – whether toward healing their own wounds or concocting a new rock fusion. So what if all they discover after using the studio like a science lab is what mom always told them: you always catch more flies with honey.