Haunting Harmonies: The first time Alice in Chains included a female vocalist a song
Alice in Chains were never really opposed to firsts. During the tour for Facelift in 1991, the band faced a variation of good and evil, with some wild fans choosing hostility over praise, sometimes causing Layne Staley to stand up and stick up for the band by jumping into the crowd to face toxic audience members. After the tour, they switched up their sound with Jerry Cantrell stepping in to take lead vocals for the first time, all while recording in a way they likely didn’t anticipate before entering the studio.
The end of the Facelift tour saw Alice in Chains entering the studio to create something specifically for Cameron Crowe’s movie Singles, but their time in session brought their attention to another potential benefit. Instead of solely recording for the movie, they doubled up the time to record new material, leading to ten new demos for an EP based on a dream Sean Kinney had about “making an EP called Sap.“
During one of the sessions, Cantrell was encouraged by Staley to lend his vocal capabilities to one of the songs, ‘Brother’, mainly because Cantrell had written the song alongside his brother, David, about how the pair became estranged when they were younger. This situation made Cantrell reflect on the pain and loneliness his brother must have felt when there were many struggles and challenges within the family.
However, the song has since become an entity to which fans can apply various meanings, whether that concerns lost loved ones, distant friends or relatives, or the complex nature of reflecting on situations you can’t change. Cantrell even demonstrated this flexibility in 2002 when he performed the song in Seattle and dedicated it to Staley, who died about a month before the concert.
Sap became a somewhat intimate affair when Alice in Chains decided to record most songs acoustically, marking another first for the band. They also enlisted a series of collaborators to help enhance the EP’s emotional feel, welcoming help from the likes of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, and Heart’s Ann Wilson—signposting the first-ever female vocalist they included in their material.
On ‘Brother,’ Wilson sings backup on the choruses alongside Staley, delivering a haunting harmony that perfectly captures Cantrell’s anguish. This harmony also enhances the song’s play with estrangement and longing, reflecting the complicated navigation of memories that still linger in the mind, causing pain and hurt at some of the most unexpected moments.
Wilson also contributes to the EP’s track ‘Am I Inside’, a solemn piece addressing the vulnerability of closing in on yourself without knowing how to break free from internal and external disconnectedness. Wilson once again joined Staley and Cantrell for the chorus, creating an emotionally tense and claustrophobic sound reflecting immense inner conflict.
Although this was another first for the band, Wilson’s inclusion feels entirely natural. It was almost as if collaborations with other well-established artists were an easy avenue for the band to navigate despite being completely new territory. On both tracks, Wilson’s delicate vocals add to Alice in Chains’ effortless grit rather than distract from it, enhancing their rawness and familiar intensity.
