Jar of Flies by Alice In Chains

Jar of Flies, the Alice in Chains EP released on Columbia on January 25, 1994, came together in a hurry: the band wrote and recorded it in a single week at London Bridge Studio in Seattle and produced it themselves. It was their second acoustic EP after Sap in 1992, and coming after the heavy weather of Dirt, the hush is all the more striking.

This is Alice in Chains with the amps turned down but the dread fully intact. Layne Staley sings like a man staring at the ceiling at 4 a.m., Jerry Cantrell's guitars and harmonies wrap around him like smoke, Sean Kinney keeps the pulse spare, and Mike Inez, newly in on bass, gives it a warm, woody floor. "Rotten Apple" moves in a slow, druggy haze, "Nutshell" is as bleak and bare as they ever got, "I Stay Away" swells and sways, "No Excuses" has a light step that almost bounces, and "Don't Follow" drifts along on a lonesome, back-porch note.

Then it became the first EP ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with more than 141,000 copies sold in its first week in the US. "No Excuses", "I Stay Away" and "Don't Follow" went to radio, and "I Stay Away" and the packaging each earned a Grammy nomination in 1995. It has since gone quadruple platinum in the US, double platinum in Canada and silver in Britain, and it sits among the best-selling things the band ever put out.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.