Send "Screaming Trees " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Many of their Seattle peers ended up disgraced, drunk, or dead, so it's a testament to the strength of the record industry in the early 1990s that selling a couple hundred thousand albums cast Screaming Trees as grunge's hard luck story. Featured on the definitive Singles soundtrack, evergreen psych-rock jam "Nearly Lost You" smeared its wah-wah guitar solos and the alluring dusk of Mark Lanegan's vocals all over MTV. But the band couldn't capitalize: Sweet Oblivion had already been out for months and wasn't being heavily toured. Four years later, Dust was a very strong follow-up whose staunch classic rock sound made it a critical hit and a commercial non-starter on alt-rock radio. Screaming Trees more or less confirmed that for all of its anti-image posturing, grunge was still about fashion: Having never been embraced as reluctant, PC-friendly sex symbols or drunken lumberjacks (rumors persist that labels execs tried to force out at least one of the hulking Conner brothers), the band called it quits in 2000 and went their separate ways in a manner that didn't leave much to the imagination until now. Last Words: The Final Recordings was put to tape during 1998 and 1999 at Stone Gossard's studio, features guitar work from Peter Buck and Josh Homme, and was recently mixed and mastered by Jack Endino, but it arrives without much fanfare: It's being released on drummer Barrett Martin's label with tentative plans for physical distribution and, unsurprisingly, Screaming Trees have no plans to reunite. Musically, it's streamlined and aerodynamic, the sort of thing you might expect as a "back to basics" move from a band getting together for the first time in over a decade, not one making the follow-up to Dust. But was that direction even really necessary back then? Though they waited until their sixth album to incorporate ambitious signifiers like sitar, tabla, and Mellotron, Dust was hardly the sound of a band gone off the deep end. More pointedly, the parameters for "basics" set forth here never existed for Screaming Trees-- this is neither the crusty SST punk of their earliest days nor the shaggy radio rock of Uncle Anaesthesia or Sweet Oblivion. Revisionist history has occasionally cast Screaming Trees as an unremarkable, workmanlike rock band blessed with a distinct vocalist, and if Last Words does anything for their legacy, it makes that notion somewhat true for the first time....full text |
| Antiquiet |
| The album features Gary Lee Conner on guitar, his brother Van Conner on bass, Barrett Martin on drums, and, of course, Mark Lanegan on Vocals. REM’s Peter Buck makes special appearances on acoustic and 12-string guitar, as well as a pre-QOTSA Josh Homme, though it’s not specified on which tracks. This release doesn’t mean, however, that there’s a Screaming Trees reunion on the horizon, as the press release clarifies: “There are no plans for a reunion, as the band members are finally well-adjusted adults who actually get along with each other and have happily moved on with their lives. Gary Lee started a family and the band Microdot Gnome while Van, also a family man, started the band Valis, as well as the label Strange Earth Records. Barrett started his own label, a jazz group, and became a college professor, and Mark has cultivated a highly successful solo career, being recognized as one of the greatest singers of his generation. No, instead of a reunion like so many other bands have done, the Screaming Trees just want to make this final album available to their friends and fans – their Last Words, so to speak.”...full text |
| Blindedbysound |
| Screaming Trees formed before many of their Seattle brethren and were partially swept up in the '90s alt-rock revolution that centered on the Emerald City, yet they didn't reach the same commercial highs. I love Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden but I've always been bitter about Trees' comparative lack of success; there's just no accounting for taste with the masses. Trees got some radio play for their single "Nearly Lost You" from their Sweet Oblivion record as well as the ubiquitous Singles soundtrack. Their follow-up Dust was a spiritual, haunting, spectacular piece of work and one of the best albums of the decade. Naturally it failed to garner much commercial attention. Some of that is because the album wasn't made for radio and some is likely due to the fact that by 1996, "Seattle" was on the way out; Kurt Cobain had passed away, Alice in Chains released a record they couldn't tour behind because of Layne Staley's health, and Pearl Jam was hiding from the hellhounds of fame on their trail. Soundgarden and Screaming Trees released Down On The Upside and Dust, respectively, and both bands went their separate ways. The winds of change blew at the end of the 20th century and the band commenced work on a self-financed album to be produced by their drummer and multi-instrumentalist Barrett Martin. On June 25th, 2000, Screaming Trees played what would be their final show. The sessions for the record were shelved, neither mixed nor released. Twelve years later, the record has finally been mixed, mastered, and released....full text |
Screaming Trees lyrics
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