Blue Gives Way To Bleak

Dear Mr. Other Guy from Alice in Chains,


I remember nineties pop culture. I remember growing my hair long, smoking the obligatory joints and wondering what was so special about Seattle. Well, I also remember Alice in Chains.

Unfortunately, you haven't been able to put things behind you. Your magnificent band's music always displayed an oscillation between singer Layne's hellbent cocaine-rasping and some overly structured urge to write 'good music'. Was this last part not your influence on the whole? This combination was golden. It made for complex guitar harmonies, and multilayered vocal parts for Layne to brilliantly overblow.

Layne died. And I really am sorry.

But it's a decade-and-a-half later, and it seems your conflict is still unresolved. It's great to know you're taking time to indulge in a little Gestalt-oriented role playing; this is an attested method to digest old grievances. A Layne sound-alike takes the submissive role you were always forced into. Good for you. And kudos to the New Guy, it's wonderful to hear someone pull those kind of vocals off without seeming to actually bleed from the throat halfway through every gig. I am glad to hear you're working on it, really. I'm just not eager to actually hear you working on it. You were co-writer of all those magnificent songs from the legendary era, and now you have centre stage. What's more, you have the copyrights to the songs and the band name.

But I just don't need to be witness to your ego-repair sessions.

With your new cd, we are left with a long awaited disc full of recordings ...of therapeutic value. And this only to guitar players with inferiority complexes all over the world. The record sounds fantastic: beautiful depth to the guitars, tasteful little phased delays propping up the vocals. In that order of significance. Not a note out of key, not a harmony strained by imperfect pitch. I've heard this before. It's a digital production tool, and it's called pitch constraint. It belongs with Shakira and Hannah Montana. This record has no raw edges. It has no seedy underbelly. Which is fine, for Hannah Montana. But if you remember the nineties like I do, you would have shot Billy Ray Cyrus at point blank range in the testicles years before his evil could spawn any miserable womb. I digress.

Art with no raunch whatsoever ignores the seamy, unwholesome side of being human. This is not healthy; ask your therapist. He or she will probably also tell you this dark place is also the fountainhead of exuberant energy. Remember that concept? Exuberant energy? I do. It was ubiquitous in your old work. I suppose that was probably why your best record was called Dirt.

I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. But please don't release another record like this, because it just makes us all miss Layne. And we didn't even know him.


Yours truly,



Robert