One of the things I love about Grunge was that it is so astoundingly of its time that even a few chords can evoke epic montages of 90’s pop culture. Images of MTV Unplugged, Beavis and Butthead, Lollapalooza, Sonic Youth on that Simpsons episode, lads with ridiculously long hair throwing themselves into crowds of perspiring admirers, they race through your mind like the opening to some ‘I Love The 90’s’ documentary. The key bands were musically diverse and wouldn’t find themselves lumped together at any other moment in history, but found themselves side by side in this dirty, sweaty, heavy movement as the antitheses to everything shiny and plastic about the 80’s. The best way to move on from something is break it, and that’s what groups like Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and (the band in question) Alice In Chains did to American music. And if you found yourself getting into Grunge, you wanted to move on and break something too – but more often than not it was just a neck strain from too much whipping ones flowing locks around. Not only is it of it’s time, but it’s of your time too.
So, in a hall smelling of vintage leathers, sweat and beer, I twitch excitedly awaiting a band that defined my teens. While guessing whether or not the flowing locks in front of me were possessed by man or women, I nervously contemplated how they’d sound – washed up, too nostaligic, rubbish? I needn’t have worried. Fresh as a newly purchased tour t-shirt, they still rock harder than those bands that followed them. That sexy blues bass, heavy drums, bad ass vocals and a guitar that (and I can’t help but quote Wayne’s World) can really wail – they’re feckin awesome!
William Duvall is a brilliant frontman. He neither turns up just to be the singer or to run the show; he offers a gorgeous rock n roll swagger of his own, while giving his all to songs that were established and loved long before joining the band. He sounds sumptuously cool during songs written under his tenure, particularly outstanding on Check My Brain. He invokes a dark tenderness on the slower songs, particularly on the beautifully tender Nutshell (to which I may have got a bit teary and was one the outstanding tracks of the evening) and encore track Rooster, singing from the very pit of his soul. Jerry Cantrell, the elder statesman and cemented guitar legend of the band oozes cool. Sunglasses, slick blonde hair, sexy guitar playing, all in black – he’s everything you want in a guitar god. He and Duvall share the stage harmoniously, chatting to the crowd like old pals and getting us excited when needed. We were told to raise the roof, they played Man in the Box, powerful and heavy. I jumped so much I got shin splints.
Alice In Chains are a band who for me aren’t about changing the world. They’re about good old fashioned metal, with poetics about those universal themes of being pissed off, alone, frustrated, all that, and uniting listeners with it. They offer to solve your problems with gut wrenching vocals, bad ass music, and just generally getting crazy. Had a bad day? Go rock out with Alice In Chains, you’ll feel better, trust me.
@LeTitts
Kate Tittley
Latest posts by Kate Tittley (see all)
- ALBUM: PAWS ‘No Grace’ - June 28, 2016
- LIVE: The Fall – o2 Ritz, Manchester 19.04.16 - April 21, 2016
- ALBUM: The Coral ‘Distance Inbetween’ - March 3, 2016
