Looking back, Alice in Chains’ early albums stand up much better than most of the opiate angst to stagger out of the mid-’90s’ alt-rock scene. Alas, the same cannot be said for deceased former singer Layne Staley. He is replaced here by hardcore singer William DuVall whose karaoke-style impersonation is almost uncanny. At their Facelift-Dirt peak (before the wretched dirge of the acoustic albums) Alice’s trademark was serious guitar riffage, self-hating lyrics and Staley’s ear-splitting whine. After a break of 14 years, Black Gives Way To Blue clearly aims to carry on the Alice legacy. In fact, not much appears to have changed… which might be the problem.
The pounding nonsense of ‘Check My Brain’ certainly ticks all the right boxes, but by the time the self-loathing metal of ‘Last of My Kind’ kicks in, you’re already past nostalgia and reaching for the skip button. The comparatively sunny ‘When the Sun Rose Again’ offers a brief reminder that they have more than one gear, but Jerry Cantrell knows which side his bread is buttered and the 43-year-old’s arms are as pneumatic as ever throughout most of an album that is slick and repetitive, rather than brilliant.
In some ways, it is the same for Pearl Jam, but the end result is different. Pearl Jam were never this fun. Even among his gloomy contemporaries, frontman Eddie Vedder was always a serious young chap. In their sprightly youth they still sounded like they’d been around forever, perfecting towering rock songs that exploded in epic choruses on the back of Vedder’s titanic growl. The good times slowly eroded when the
’90s ended and the turgid Riot Act was surely their lowest ebb. But 2006’s eponymous effort – usually an attempt to return to glory days – saw a dramatic about-face. But it went further; it went beyond the grandeur of debut album Ten, instead sounding like a spiky, garage band version of The Who. It was less a return than a rebirth.
Backspacer continues where Pearl Jam left off. Its opening songs whizz by, from the spiky zeal of ‘Gonna See My Friend’ and ‘Got Some’ to the effervescent new wave of ‘The Fixer’. Elsewhere the Who-esque ‘Johnny Guitar’ and ‘Supersonic’ pay due deference to their forbears. ‘Just Breathe’ sees a brief return to Vedder’s folksy solo stuff, but even this is surprisingly palatable.
In fairness, Pearl Jam were always a straight-up rock band who were wrongly lumped in with the grunge crowd. They never needed the slash-your-wrists, doom-laden gimmickry of Staley and Cantrell. Their audiences are likely to be different, too, with the polished metal of Alice still bidding to win over the kids. True, Pearl Jam are longer in the tooth these days, but they’ve never sounded younger or, in the last decade, better.
Alice in Chains
2/4
Black Gives Way to Blue
Pearl Jam
4/5
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