Dirt |
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Released: September 29, 1992 Peak: 6 US, 42 UK, 25 CN, 13 AU Sales (in millions): 4.0 US, -- UK, 5.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: grunge rock |
Tracks:(Click for codes to charts.)
Total Running Time: 57:37 The Players:
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Rating: 4.139 out of 5.00 (average of 22 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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A Tentpole of Grunge“When Seattle became identified as the epicenter of a musical movement in the early 1990s, Alice in Chains and their album Dirt found themselves unexpectedly in the spotlight. Until then, the band had been regarded as a rising metal band, opening for Van Halen and Poison.” RD They were “more of a hard rock band than a grunge or ‘alternative’ band” TM “but their appearance in Cameron Crowe’s movie Singles – the closest thing to a cinematic representation of grunge Seattle – immediately gave them greater prominence.” RD“The band typified the Seattle scene with their distorted guitars, melancholic lyrics, and penchant for wearing plaid. Armed with a Black Sabbath-influenced sound and the haunting melodies of lead singer Layne Staley, Dirt helped to establish grunge as a genre.” RD The band’s second full-length album proved to be their “major artistic statement and the closest they ever came to recording a flat-out masterpiece.” AM A Drug-Themed Concept Album“It’s a primal, sickening howl from the depths of Layne Staley’s heroin addiction, and one of the most harrowing concept albums ever recorded.” AM While recording the album, Staley checked out of rehab and quickly returned to using heroin. WK Drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Starr were also struggling with addiction. In their case, it was alcohol. WKStaley said the album focused on “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.” WK “There were omens enough in the drug-related and suicidal songs, such as Junkhead (‘We are an elite race of our own / The stoners, junkies, and freaks’) and Dirt (‘I want to taste dirty, stinging pistol / In my mouth, on my tongue.’)” RD Spin magazine said, “There’s a brutal, though troubling honesty in the lyrics…as a means of cutting yourself open and letting the listener look inside, Alice in Chains has certainly spit out a mouthful.” RD “Not every song on Dirt is explicitly about heroin, but Jerry Cantrell’s solo-written contributions (nearly half the album) effectively maintain the thematic coherence – nearly every song is imbued with the morbidity, self-disgust, and/or resignation of a self-aware yet powerless addict.” AM Pop Matters’ Michael Christopher said, “the record wasn’t celebratory by any means – but you’d be hard pressed to find a more brutally truthful work laid down – and that’s why it will always be one of the greatest records ever made.” WK The Band“Cantrell’s technically limited but inventive guitar work is by turns explosive, textured, and queasily disorienting, keeping the listener off balance with atonal riffs and off-kilter time signatures. Staley’s stark confessional lyrics are similarly effective, and consistently miserable. Sometimes he’s just numb and apathetic, totally desensitized to the outside world; sometimes his self-justifications betray a shockingly casual amorality; his moments of self-recognition are permeated by despair and suicidal self-loathing.” AMThe album’s “most bludgeoning songs contain outbreaks of utterly lovely harmony singing. Its rhythm guitar attack is studded with jerky, odd-meter prog-rock riffs.” TM The SongsThe album was led by the single Would?, which first appeared on the soundtrack for Cameron Crowe’s 1991 film Singles. The soundtrack boasted a slate of Seattle-based musicians and was one of the significant albums in introducing grunge to the mainstream. Cantrell wrote the song as a tribute to Andrew Wood, his friend and singer of Mother Love Bone, who died of a drug overdose in 1990. WKThem Bones was, as Cantrell said, about “mortality, that one of these days we’ll end up a pile of bones.” WK He wrote Dam That River after a fight with Kinney in which Kinney broke a coffee table over his head. WK Cantrell and Staley wrote Rain When I Die about their girlfriends. WK Sickman grew out of a challenge from Staley to Cantrell to “write the sickest, darkest, most fucked up and heaviest thing he could write.” WK Cantrell wrote Down in a Hole to his longtime girlfriend, Courtney Clarke. He said it’s one of his top three favorites. He said, “It’s the reality of my life, the path I’ve chosen and in a weird way it kind of foretold where we are right now. It’s hard for us both to understand…that this life is not conducive to much success with long-term relationships.” WK “Even given its subject matter, Dirt is monstrously bleak, closely resembling the cracked, haunted landscape of its cover art. The album holds out little hope for its protagonists (aside from the much-needed survival story of Rooster, a tribute to Cantrell’s Vietnam-vet father), but in the end, it’s redeemed by the honesty of its self-revelation and the sharp focus of its music.” AM
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First posted 3/27/2011; last updated 11/28/2024. |
