How I Like Screaming Trees: The Playlist
I’m woefully ignorant about the solo career of Mark Lanegan, the revered singer-songwriter who's passed away at the age of 57. Despite an uncommonly stoic stage presence and notoriously argumentative demeanor (I really have to read that memoir), his career took him from the small town of Ellensburg, Washington to Seattle in its grunge heyday to his final home in Killarney, Ireland. He collaborated regularly over the years with Queens Of The Stone Age, Soulsavers and Greg Dulli. He released duets with artists as diverse as Isobel Campbell, Neko Case and Martina Topley-Bird. His 1990 solo debut The Winding Sheet was a watershed moment for the Seattle rock scene, its languid blues helping to expand the musical ambitions of his future-platinum, then punk-rawkin’ peers. I truly wish I’d be checking out his 21st century work this week under happier circumstances.
But over the last decade or so, I’ve become pretty well versed in Screaming Trees, the band that first got him out of Ellensburg. As described in Mark Yarm’s fantastic grunge oral history Everybody Loves Our Town, the Trees began in the back of a video store owned by the Conner family in 1984. Brothers Gary & Van played guitar and bass, Mark Pickerel was on drums, and Lanegan sang. Ellensburg was an odd mix of college faculty and farmers, and these were the weirdest young adults there, fascinated by punk and classic rock, thrilled to find three other people who wanted to play both too.
Most people will tell you the band’s classic was 1992’s Sweet Oblivion, the band’s sixth album, with its Singles-soundtrack hit and confident, arena-ready swagger. But - to me - their trio of albums on SST appeal even more, all wowee-zowee wah-wah madness played with a punk authority and pace. Maybe it’s because I was once a precocious teenage music freak in a college town myself, but Even If And Especially When, Invisible Lantern and Buzz Factory explode with the accidental synthesis that comes when you get a bunch of goobers in a room, doing their thing before they even know what it is. But where every band of lanky weirdos I was in broke up after playing once to a dozen people, these guys kept going until their post-modern psychedelia coalesced into something that could blow an audience willingly away. To me, Sweet Oblivion and the even grander follow-up, 1996’s Dust, isn’t the story, but an impressive third act.
Even without having read that memoir, I’ve gathered and appreciate Lanegan’s conflicted emotions about his time with the Trees. After their fraught, long-brewing dissolution in 2000, he traveled the globe working with brilliant musicians from numerous genres and scenes. Why would he want to be told he ruled writing plastic fantastic nonsense with a bunch of schlubs from high school? Why would he want to be reminded that an obnoxious recluse two years his senior got to talk shit at him and wail on his guitar all over everything? Why would he want to remember what his toxic lifestyle was putting those guys through? Butterflies don’t like to sit around discussing the cocoon, you know? But what an amazing, funky bunch of caterpillars they were.
Out of respect to their evolutionary arc, this introductory playlist is more chronological than I usually prefer. Two songs each from the albums I love, a tip of the hat to the indie and major label debuts I find relatively patchy. But it’s still an introductory playlist rather than a best-of, designed for flow and intrigue rather than to encapsulate their finest moments (wouldn't that be kind of rude to do to a band? To imply it’s all downhill from here? I want you to spend money on them, not trust I’ve saved you the effort). Goodbye, Mark Lanegan. Thanks for leaving us as much you did, and forgive me for admiring the baby photos so much.
