A happy ending was the last thing anyone would have predicted for the Screaming Trees. From Washington State, recording for the likes of SST and Sub Pop before a step up to the major labels, theirs was the familiar grunge narrative of a band cursed by drug addiction and bad luck, only without the pay-off of commercial success. In 1996, the band recorded their finest album, Dust, but by then they were in poor shape. One journalist’s meeting with Mark Lanegan at this time consisted of accompanying the singer on a trip to pawn musical equipment in order to buy drugs.
Dust had been a critical favourite, filled with Zepplinesque psych-rock and propelled by Lanegan’s vengeful god baritone, but the band, and this thrilling music, proved a difficult sell in the age of MTV-appropriate alternative rock. If the heroes of grunge found in their music cathartic release, the Screaming Trees seemed to belong to an earlier tradition: their music seemed to be doing battle against biblical forces, a conflict played out in their ragged, turbulent but ultimately fated rock music. Drummer Barrett Martin, who financed and later oversaw the mix of these, their final recordings, rightly calls the band “mystical”. (more…)
