#22 - Dirt

#22
Artist: Alice in Chains
Album: Dirt
Year of Release: 1992
Label: Columbia

I love grunge and yet this is the only proper grunge album on this list.  This seems like a glaring contradiction but it makes sense.  I've never really liked Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots are fine, and I was so overexposed to Nirvana and Soundgarden as a youth that those bands feel more like relics of an earlier era than personal favorites (even thought they are great).  Which leaves us with Alice in Chains, which is fine by me as they are my favorite band of the grunge zeitgeist anyway.

Like the previous entry on this list, Dirt is a good display of every strength the band has to offer.  There's short bursts of songwriting genius ("Them Bones" is like two minutes long and still has room for a guitar solo) and classic slow burns ("Rooster").  There's songs that feel like they were ripped from the middle of the eighties ("Down in a Hole") and songs that are timeless ("Would?").  And lol like every other track rips as well.  I might be convincing myself to move this further up the list as I type this...