Jar of Flies : Alice in Chains : Review : Rolling Stone

With such songs as "God Smack" and "Hate to Feel" crammed thick with junkie rage and Oedipal tension, Dirt (1992) is the musical equivalent of coughing blood – harrowing and real. Dense guitars spin ominous, flattened melodies: the sound of cages rattling. Acoustic leaning, the new seven-song EP from the Seattle quartet Alice in Chains is subtler – strings lighten "I Stay Away," and "Whale and Wasp," an instrumental, is darkly gorgeous. On "Swing on This" and "Rotten Apple," Layne Staley's vocals, owing as much to Styx and Kansas as Jerry Cantrell's guitars do to Black Sabbath, evoke pathos as well as anger. Yet this is hardly Alice lite. "I repent tomorrow," Staley sings, wary even of hope, and in nearly every song, the word home wrenchingly resounds – an ache, a bitter prayer.

PAUL EVANS

(Posted: Mar 24, 1994)

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4of 5 Stars

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Alice in Chains are fortunate in that that they can successfully release five-to-seven song EP’s without losing momentum. The follow-up to 1990's dreary "Facelift" was one such release, "SAP." The sophomore effort was an interesting segue to the multi-platinum “Dirt”, and a near u-turn, incorporating acoustic guitars with slower progressions uncharacteristic of the Seattle metal dirge band. Nonetheless, SAP stayed aloft through adherence to the band’s core formula of vocalist Layne Staley’s unabated despair and Jerry Cantrell’s skillful guitar mixes. “Jar of Flies” returns to the acoustic EP format, going leaps beyond SAP in its scope. Though short of a masterpiece, the album once again demonstrates Alice in Chains’ range.

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The tone knob for the album is set for desolation almost immediately, and the band has never sounded better within the tortured milieu where they feel most at home. “Rotten Apple” provides an almost otherworldly sense of detachment and jaded hopelessness which Layne Staley captures with his wailing baritone. Jerry Cantrell’s opening mix of slow flange and encrusted distortion howls like a wounded animal across the desert. Sean Kinney’s sparse snare beats out the stark stride of Staley’s worn vocals as the song slowly spirals down through Cantrell’s crying wah.

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The album as a whole exudes a sense of softened introspection; an almost war-weary trudge after the harrowing descent into personal hell told through “Dirt.” “Nutshell” follows in the footsteps of “Rotten Apple” through its somber sense of helplessness and disgust with the world. Feeling numb amidst a swarm of others who feel the same pain, Staley still “fights this battle all alone”, sardonically remarking “my gift of self is raped, my privacy is raked.” The crawl out of hell has become a march, but an unsteady one. The dizzying chorus of “I Stay Away” evokes Staley’s personal demons once again, climbing onto a spinning whirlwind of string arrangements only to crash down again into a sea of growling guitars and the title’s sardonic words.

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The powerful mix of Staley’s and Cantrell’s vocal harmonies are best showcased on the album’s best track, “No Excuses”. Easily the band’s most accessible track to date, it forces a sense of hope even amidst Staley’s most dire lyrics. The hearty twangs of Mike Inez’s bass surprisingly lighten the song and Cantrell’s searing solo bring glimmers of disbelief that Alice in Chains is as metal as metal can be in the 90s. Cantrell’s guitar speaks over a myriad emotions, speaking wherever Staley doesn’t. The hauntingly beautiful “Whale and Wasp” is one of his finest moments.

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A final glimmering gem on the 7 song EP is “Don’t Follow”, yet another signpost on Staley’s woeful journey through drugs and depression which would eventually end his life. His pained plea “take me home” echoes throughout the expanses of the desolate forged through Cantrell’s simple fingerpicked guitar and a western-style harmonica. A succinct, yet emotionally fulfilling expose, “Jar of Flies” reveals that less can often mean a hell of a lot more.
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