Alice in Chains’ Dirt is a grim and grimey trek through pain and anger, an autobiographical account of lead vocalist Layne Staley’s crippling heroin addiction that eventually killed him a decade after this release at the age of 34 years old.
Listening to this record you can’t help but feel a sense of hopelessness and dread– tracks soaked in fuzzy overdriven guitars, a relentlessly pounding rhythm section, haunting harmonies, and the dire strain of Staley’s iconic voice. There was a moment about halfway through this album when it dawned on me the sonic elements weren’t simply production choices– they are the manifestation of the noise that actually exists in Staley’s head. It was a realization that was powerful and sad and intimate all at the same time.
From Staley’s own thoughts on the making of Dirt:
“Dirt was about dealing with kind of a personal anguish and turmoil, which turns into drugs to ease that pain, and being confident that that was the answer in a way. Then later on the songs start to slip down closer and closer to hell, and then he figures out that drugs were not, and are not, the way to ease that pain. Basically, it’s the whole story of the last three years of my life.”
I’m loathe to romanticize drug addiction and the trauma it entails, but it’s hard not to marvel a bit at this brutally honest record that captures what Staley and his band members were going through at the time. The 90’s grunge scene was kind of a trip considering all of the anti-social behavior was actually quite mainstream– Dirt was nominated for a Grammy Award, and the album went 5x platinum, an era of music that maybe didn’t outright celebrate the depression plaguing the artists making it but certainly didn’t consciously intervene either.
But damn does it sound good doing it. That’s the unfortunate reality of the grunge era (and great art in general really)— some of our greatest achievements as humans are born out of great pain.
Standout Songs: “Rooster”, “Hate To Feel”, “Would?”, “Down In A Hole”
