Heroin: The Album

DIRT
9/29/92

We get annual updates on the whereabouts of the Nevermind cover baby, but whoever wonders about the chick on Dirt?

Dirt is not the most metal of grunge albums, but it is the most grunge of metal albums. It's also one of the most aggressively depressing things I've ever heard. Layne Staley was firmly in the grip of Seattle's second-most popular drug and it took every ounce of remaining strength to write and record a masterpiece of such depravity.

"Them Bones"--Song one tells listeners no lies. The fight against pain and loss is a solitary struggle, and proof that the desperate pugilist doesn't always cut an admirable figure. "Them Bones" sounds like "If You're Happy and You Know It" compared to what follows.

"Dam That River"--The song most redolent of Facelift, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the one closest to being deemed skippable. Yeah it's so tight it resists a dime, but I could say that about every other track on here.

"Rain When I Die"--Gives me the shivers. Oh to be 15 and afraid of 30! Your dreams don't have to regularly feature a bloody knife wielded by a severed arm in order to appreciate "Rain When I Die," though it helps.

"Sickman"--Ah, the drug buddy. The ultimate in mistrust and disloyalty. Hold hands, but don't squeeze, and if he offers to catch you, run.

"Sickman" is a vortex made out of razorblades and misremembered hallucinations. Without Layne's incredible range, it would verge on intolerable.

"Rooster"--Every multi-platinum album has at least one overplayed hit. With all due respect to Pops Cantrell and his sacrifice, the chorus is hokey as Hee-Haw and shouldn't work whatsoever. It only does thanks again to Layne Staley, who imbues the tale of the unkillable soldier with tremendous shit-eating swagger.

"Junkhead"--Cracks my ass how Staley's all "YEEEEAAAAHHH" when the song is just big negation. The confluence of sounds here is unscrupulous.

One could be forgiven for assuming the members of Alice In Chains were scuzz-buckets with holes in their bottoms (and along the sides).

"Dirt"--The art of the metaphor. When Layne explains he's using drugs to escape the hellish miasma of his life, look deeper. Decode the symbolic language being used to determine the truth behind his words. To wit: he's using drugs to escape the hellish miasma of his life.

Holy God this song makes me want to eat drywall. I mean I like it, a lot, but fucking Christ someone text me a GIF of a Boston terrier tripping an obnoxious child.

"God Smack"--Godsmack sucks? Of course they fucking do. All right, goddamnit, listen up and listen well. The members of AIC cannot be blamed for the music of Godsmack, only their name. You don't blame the car manufacturer for a drunk driver's BAC, do you?

"Stick your arm for some real fun"? Wow, dude. Why does Layne sing like a horse on the verses? Is he being cute or what?

"Iron Gland"--An interlude with Slayer's Tom Araya yelling diabolical hoo-ha over distorted devil foodstuffs.

"Hate To Feel"--First impressions endure. Touching a snake disproved my belief in their sliminess, yet the phobia remains. Heroin, so I've heard tell, makes a monstrous first impression. Even if you upchuck the contents of your guts (a fairly common occurrence) the bliss lingers longer than humiliation. And, apparently, common sense.

This is Dirt's sleeper, the shadow of a one-armed man with a hook for a hand cast against the bedroom wall.

"Angry Chair"--Tap-dancing on graves for pennies. Blame the infection, sentient and capable of communicating in the host's language.

"I don't mind, yeah/I don't mind." More negation woefully disguised as affirmation. The music's power is undeniable. The musician's weakness is unbearable.

"Down In A Hole"--Incredibly not about hard drugs, but hard hearts. Pretension saved by precision. It's not hard to figure why women fall for men like Jerry Cantrell, or why their relationships will collapse quicker than a house of cards in a tornado. The artist hoards their emotions, feeling them as each situation demands. Soon he or she becomes adept at manipulating them for personal and professional benefit. A partner with self-esteem will grow weary of the games, and the sociopath artist will have the gall to feel mistreated.

"Would?"--Darker than a night of Himmler's soul. (But much, much less fascistic.) A series of howls from the wolf reduced to guarding an ungrateful cub. The vocals are awe-inspiring, without peer in the rock genre at that time.



My parents hadn't a clue about what I listened to as a teen. Or watched, or read, or thought. I only left the bedroom to attend school, use the bathroom, or retrieve food. They had me late in life, having already endured six kids, which provided me with a leeway that I knew even at the time I was abusing. What would they, two Christian children of the soil, have thought of Dirt? I'm glad I never found out.

Heroin ain't shit. Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell all used at various times in their lives, and all three created indelible art. Brad Nowell from Sublime shot up with the express hope to be like his idols and made several laughably derivative albums before his premature death from an overdose. So if you still need to be told that the substance of an artist is not entirely down to the substances inside the artist, well, you got told. Narcotics will only make a person more of what they essentially are, or less of what they essentially are.