Underrated gem in a beloved catalog#
Often overshadowed by the 1994 EP Jar of Flies, Alice in Chains’ 1992 acoustic EP Sap is the band’s shortest release, featuring only 5 songs (and from what I can see, not all streaming platforms include the fifth track, Love Song). However, at least 4 of the 5 songs are some of the best in Alice in Chain’s discography. I picked this record up on an online auction some years back for $30 which was kinda crazy to me then, which makes it unfathomable how it resells for $90 now. With a repress of their self-titled album and MTV Unplugged likely on the way in the next year or so, Sap will probably end up being the hardest Alice in Chains studio release to find.
This release starts off with the soulful Brother, featuring a rare Jerry Cantrell lead vocal performance, with Ann Wilson of the band Heart performing background vocals. Next is Got Me Wrong, a track featuring themes of not changing for anyone. Interestingly, it was released as a single 2 years after the EP was released.
The third track is, by far, the standout on this EP. Right Turn features Jerry and Layne performing a duet, with vocal features from Seattle legends Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) and Mark Arm (Mudhoney). Right Turn demonstrates the collaborative effort that the grunge movement really was - at the end of the day, it really was just like fifteen guys who cared about their local music scene. Funnily enough, the group is credited as “Alice Mudgarden” in the liner notes. It’s a song that deals with, like many of Alice in Chains’s songs, heroin addiction. Considering how the drug ravaged the grunge scene throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, there’s no better group to sing this song than Alice Mudgarden.
Am I Inside is one of Alice in Chains’s quietest tracks, featuring themes that sort of go hand-in-hand with Got Me Wrong about struggling to meet expectations and desperately trying to keep a grasp on your true nature. The final song, Love Song, is clearly a joke, but it’s still a pretty terrible and obnoxious one at that. Wailing and someone banging on a piano over genuinely stupid lyrics like “Kiss the midget, kiss the midget, kiss the midget, kiss the midget”, it’s not one that I’d ever put on by myself, but it’s not like I would turn off the record before it’s done playing either.
Overall, Sap is a great addition to the Alice in Chains discography, with much improved lyricism over their prior release Facelift, showing the direction that the band would take in later releases like their self-titled album, as well as demonstrating the acoustic powerhouse they’d later become on their MTV Unplugged and Jar of Flies releases.
Favorite Track: Right Turn