Dreamer Reviews: Black Gives Way to Blue

Grunge was a genre that saw more then it's fair share of brilliant singers. Layne Staley of Alice in Chains was one of them. Layne had a voice like a heartbroken werewolf, all bitterness and wild power, and he could hold his own easily with rock's best frontmen.

Layne Staley is also the one Grunge casualty to boast of an end even more harrowing then Kurt Cobain's suicide blast to the head. A shotgun, though gruesome, is at least quick. Layne chose the long, lonely, painful path of the hard-core drug addict. In the end, he had become so isolated that he would be dead for weeks before his 6'1, 86-pound body was finally found.

Maybe that's what Jerry Cantrell, the band's surviving principle songwriter, is referring to in "All Secrets Known," the opening track of Black Gives Way to Blue. This is Alice in Chains first album in fifteen years, and first album ever without Layne, but their former band-mate casts a long, dark shadow over the group that they have only just begun to make peace with.

The song starts with a Slash-in-a-haunted-house style riff, which swings back and forth as the vocals kick in. "Hope / A new beginning/ time/ time to start living," a life-affirming sentiment made flat and factual by the droning, weary singing. Jerry Cantrell, lead guitarist and the band's principle songwriter, has mostly taken over lead vocal duties, and his voice, though tuneful with a pack-a-day grizzled edge to it, lacks the dog-of-war power that Layne took with him to his grave. Instead Jerry sounds flatly amazed that life continues on even after "we died." There's no joy here, just perseverance in a world that won't ever be the same, and for reasons everyone knows about.

The group members have, for the most part, avoided talking too explicitly about Layne in public, but for for me it makes the most sense to think of this album as the band's attempt to say goodbye to their band-mate properly, even if posthumously. Like most posthumous goodbyes, they'll probably spend the rest of their lives trying to get it right.

Check My Brain has become a hit all over rock radio and it's easy to see why: the churning, droning guitars are classic Alice in Chains. Jerry Cantrell's singing voice may or may not be up to sharing space with a ghost, but he's a powerhouse on the guitar and probably always will be. He doesn't have the naked virtuosity of Mike McCreedy but his brand of droning, haunted, bluesy metal sounds like nothing else you'll hear.

The song's topic is Cantrell's re-location from Seattle, with it's rain and oppressive cloud of memories, to sun-bathed Los Angeles which he declares "alright" with all the enthusiasm he can muster. It looks like California is one of the last places he expected to end up, let alone be happy. You get the sense that he's not really at peace with being at peace, calling himself "a creep in the fog," but he's found healing there, for better or worse.

Last of my Kind is the first track on the album co-written by new member William DuVall, and it starts with an atmospheric, haunted ambiance before degenerating into the kind of deconstructed, post-apocalyptic noise of see-sawing, screaming guitars and slow, thundering drums. It's a one idea song and while rocking hard, I found it a bit musically underwhelming.

The lyrics are pure Alice in Chains too: a portrait of a mythical outcast, exiled and forced to scrounge for survival in a world that hopes the hardship will beat him into complacence. It's dark, it's dream-like, and it fits right into the pantheon of dystopian metaphors that Alice in Chains has always traded in.

Your Decision is the first track on the album worth actually buying it for. It's a mostly acoustic number and displays an unexpected strength for the new Alice in Chains: sentiment.

I was listening to this track on headphones in the middle of the community college computer lab and I started tearing up. In public. Some mournful cello adds portent to the situation, the acoustic guitars have an almost folk feel before the aquatic, electric solo kicks in. This is one of the first tracks were new guy William DuVall's supporting vocals are audible,

The lyric writer was, simply, powerless. He couldn't stop "you" from destroying yourself. He couldn't change the fact that, when faced with the world, you chose to die rather then deal. They needed you. You choose fear instead. It's a choice you made knowing what it meant, and it inflicted no small damage on the people around you. "You feed the fire that burned us all/when you lied."

The singer loves you and he hates you, he's washed his hands of you for the pain you've caused him, he desperately misses you. There's something bitter and angry in this song, wounded and howling, quiet and sad. Tragedies are whirlwinds, and there are no easy answers. Art might be unique in it's ability to take something so painful and make it into something so beautiful. The spell it casts lasts long after the song ends.

This live performance is noteworthy too. First because the lack of strings and the totally acoustic treatment of the song makes it sound more frank and places everything in a smaller space. William Duvall's choice to wear sunglasses onstage is an interesting one: they make him stylish but anonymous. Jerry Cantrell's face, on the other hand, says everything. He's the beating heart of this band. Maybe he always was.

Bands tend to stick together because they believe they can bring out the best in each other. If the three of them didn't still believe they have something to offer the world, as a group, then this resurrection would have never happened. Where DuVall fits in I don't know quite yet.

A Looking In View was the first taste anyone got of this album, being the framework of the atmospheric and very NSFW music video that featured, in succession: child abuse, obsession, decay, repression, dehumanization, religious fanaticism, despair and, at the end, something resembling renewal. The whole sad play is bathed in the colors of despair and isolation, and there's even a visual reference to Alice In Chains very first hit single. This video is what got me paying attention to this band's comeback. Bands that play this grim card are a dime a dozen now, but this one might just be the real thing. Another interesting note: the band themselves don't actually appear in the video, and that works too.

The song itself is like a dirge: the tempo is torturously slow, like a migrane throb, but everything piled on that kick-drum beat comes on like a hurricane: the bass-line is breakneck, the guitars drone and shriek, the vocals snarl. It's a long song, over seven minutes long, ending in a fade-out. It's a fairly accurate barometer of whether or not you'll like this new Alice in Chains: if you got through the whole thing, then you'll get through the whole album. It's also the second song on the album to end in a fade out. Apparently new AIC is more interested in how things start these days then how they end.

When The Sun Rose Again is where things slow down for me. Well they slow down for everyone, it's a very slow piece with acoustic guitars and shakers easily audible, and though this combination is usually a recipe for sadness, this song is more pensive and vaguely ominous then sad, and the lyrics are the album's most ambiguous yet. "Were you burned away/ When the sun rose again?" could be a reference to the resurrection of the band, or a retelling of The Snowman so that doesn't narrow it down. "Pray / squeal when you're caught/ cry/ it's not my fault," which, though straight-forward enough in it's imagery, could refer to any number of things. "Time to trade in never-befores / Selling out for the score" could be nitpicked to death. We're in dense metaphor country here, but at least we're out of fade-out country. The next songs flow flawlessly, one into the other, letting the landscape build: a feature they didn't even have to make a big deal about in the promos, (cough)Timbaland!(/cough)

Acid Bubble starts out sounding like A Looking In View's little, more sensitive brother with it's buzz-sawing guitars, the murderously slow pace, but the relentlessly dark tone suddenly takes a more mysterious turn when the chorus starts soaring. "I am the child that lives and cries in the corner." Since this is AIC we're talking about, they soar on broken wings close to the ground, but they are on wing nevertheless. This is as anthemic as post-Layne Alice in Chains is gonna get, I suspect. It even contains a Green-Day-Style plot-twist when the style shifts to a menacing march that sounds like an army advancing, then retreating, then taking the hill for good over the songs six minutes.

Lesson Learned reminds me of "Last of my Kind" in that it's another sloggy rock number that is shorter then "A Looking In View" and doesn't have "Acid Bubble's" militant plot-twist. However, it does have a nice tremolo-heavy solo.

It could be interpreted as being about that rock-bottom moment when you learn that the end is not the end. "Nowhere to buy in, most of us hiding, others are shining" is another nice positive thought wrapped in so much world-weary drear that you'd ALMOST think the singer was being sarcastic if the tone wasn't so frank. This is a quality Jerry Cantrell's voice has that Layne's never did. Layne was a beast of the underworld, and he never went near sentiment without the armor of angry resignation. Jerry Cantrell and William DuVall can voice the occasional positive thought without sounding sappy or insincere. "In your darkest hour you strike gold."

Take Her Out is yet another sloggy, droning rock number. Make no mistake: this album is not a triumphant return for one of the 90s most evocative rock groups. The musical choices themselves are redundant enough to make this a promising start at best. Yes, the sludgey metal IS Alice in Chains, but Cantrell himself is usually more then willing to dabble in other styles. I hope they just need to get their nerve back.

All the same, I'm probably not alone in suspecting that "Her" in the title is Alice herself (i.e, his band) and this song is as close to an answer to those who question his right to resurrect the group as we are probably going to get.

If I'm sure of one thing, it's that Jerry Cantrell wants to be in this music thing for the long-haul. His millions haven't robbed him of the fire in his belly. He's also realized that he's always going to be "Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains," expected to play those songs. Well, he wrote those songs.

"I feel time is dragging on/ Aren't you getting tired of me?" he asks. Who is he asking? Himself? The fans who keep showing up to his shows? The band-mates who where quick to answer his homing beacon? The people waiting for him to decide whether to claim AiC for himself or split from it entirely? All of them?

"Want to take her out again." At least he knows he wants to do what he's doing. It's everything else that's uncertain.

Private Hell is slow, with a mournful tone the electric guitar solo gently weeps, the arpeggio riff the song seems written around is beautiful, strong, and very sad. It'd be too easy to say this one is about the self-imposed suffering that you-know-who locked himself into. He's not the only one in the world who ever died this way. Choosing to stay in the cell you made for yourself, opting out of love, joy, and eventually life itself, nevertheless the song doesn't have much of "Your Decision's" droning bitterness. This song is a cry of mourning.

Black Gives Way to Blue. If you need one reason to get this album, it's this song. The song is a sensitive arrangement of acoustic guitars, a slow tempo, delicate, rushing cymbals, and one crying electric guitar that made me think of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight:" slow, beautiful, and as full of love as a guitar can be. I even heard a xylophone in there somewhere. The band really pulled out all the stops for this song.

By the way, according to the liner notes, the piano was played by Elton John. Elton John + Alice in Chains = Owch my brain. However, if it sounds dorky in concept, it's not at all dorky in practice. This is the only piano I can find anywhere on the album and it gives this track a graceful solemnity.

Every time they've performed it live, it's the last song they play, and they've played it "for Layne." And maybe this is the best way to handle Layne, his legacy, and their own grief. After all the blessing, damning, begging, loving, cursing, and crying is over, this is the best thing you can do for the ghost you see everywhere.

You tell him you'll never forget him.

You tell him you love him.

Then you let him rest.

If this is the start of a new stage of Alice in Chains, or just the farewell the band deserved, I can't say. But I'll be listening. That's for sure.