Alice in Chains- Dirt (1992)

If you've only heard one Alice in Chains album, it's probably this one. There's more to them than Dirt, of course, and there's more to them than their original incarnation- Billy DuVall is a worthy successor to Layne Staley, and the band were superb when I saw them in 2009- but this, unmistakeably, is their most well-known album.

It's a collection of great songs, of course, headed by "Rooster" and the incredible "Would?", fully showcasing both Jerry Cantrell's superb songwriting and the vocal power of the late and extremely tragic Layne Staley. It's distrubing how we all, back in the early '90s, saw Layne's struggles with heroin- the overwhelming subject of this album- as a tragic but expected part of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle rather than as a terrible tragedy which was waiting to happen- and, of course, in 2002, eventually did.

It's also weird to think of this as a "grunge" album- yes, the band were unmistakably part of the Seattle "scene" and played in umpteen side projects with various other well known "grunge" musicians- yet this album, while having a fuzzy guitar sound and no hair metal pretentiousness, is sufficiently heavy that we can't unambiguously deny that it's a metal album. But who cares about these silly categories? Dirt is a great collection of songs with a great sound and a great singer.