IT’S ALICE IN CHAINS’ DECISION TO WORK WITH AN ALIEN

I feel like I’ve been ragging on Alice in Chains a little bit lately, and I feel bad about that because I’m a huge Alice in Chains fan and I love Black Gives Way to Blue.

That being said, the band’s latest video, for the beautiful “Your Decision,” is slightly worse than the video for “Check My Brain.” Which is weird, because the director, Stephen Schuster, also directed the band’s totally awesome video for “A Looking In View.”

My beef isn’t with the presence of some chick named Amanda Fields, who was apparently on Project Runway (I’ve never seen it). I mean, she’s either had too much work done or just naturally looks like a freakin’ alien, but that’s neither here nor there. No, my complaint is mostly that the video is just lame – it seems to be taking its cues from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, but in the worst possible way. What the themes of that film have to do with this song isn’t clear, and a lot of the symbolic imagery subsequently feels forced and trite.

Still an awesome song, though.

-AR