HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Dust – Screaming Trees

SCREAMING TREES were something of an anomaly among the grunge big-hitters of the early to mid 90s. Sure, they were from Seattle; sure, they played heavy music with loud guitars and, sure, they were known for their incendiary live shows and wild partying lifestyle. But many people don’t realise quite how long and hard they had been working before they (kind of) hit the big time towards the end of their career. Formed in 1984 by brothers Van and Gary Lee Conner, alongside vocalist Mark Lanegan and original drummer Mark Pickerel (later replaced by Barrett Martin), the band initially formed in the small town of Ellensburg, Washington – about one hundred miles north of the city where they would ultimately find their fame.

They began their career writing and rehearsing in a backroom of a video store that was run by the Conner brothers’ father, taking odd jobs here and there to fund their earliest recordings. At this point, their sound was a unique – and noisy – blend of garage punk and 60s psychedelic rock, although this would change somewhat as their career progressed. However, this clash of also reflected many of the differences between the band members themselves. As anyone who has read Lanegan’s unflinching autobiography Sing Backwards and Weep can attest, SCREAMING TREES hated each other, pretty much from day one. Early arguments over the band’s creative direction (Lanegan wanted things to be darker and bluesier, while the Conner brothers preferred a straight psychedelic rock revival) ultimately led to the band creating their own special blend of soulful, heavy music and saw them soon labelled as pioneers of the grunge movement, alongside contemporaries MUDHONEY, SOUNDGARDEN and MELVINS.

After putting out four albums via underground label SST Records, the band finally signed a major label deal with Epic in 1990, releasing Uncle Anesthesia in 1991 and its follow-up, Sweet Oblivion in 1993, the latter bringing them to the brink of huge global success. Despite that success though, tensions in the band were not going away and instead were often spilling over into violent physical altercations – both onstage and in the rehearsal studio. As grunge transitioned from local scene to international juggernaut, thanks largely to the rapid rise of fellow Seattle-ites ALICE IN CHAINS and NIRVANA, perhaps inevitably the members of SCREAMING TREES sought solace from the in-fighting and tour-boredom in drugs. Lanegan in particular soon found himself in the full throes of heroin addiction, experiencing week-long blackouts and bouts of homelessness.

Listening to Sweet Oblivion now, it seems almost unfathomable that this was an album created by a group of people completely at war with each other, so soulful was the sound they were making. Amidst the chaos of the fights, addictions and pressures of newfound fame, the band scrapped numerous attempts at a follow-up. Somehow, through 1995, the band managed to get themselves back together just enough to record Dust, released in June 1996. Belying the circumstances surrounding its creation, it is a record filled with both beauty and power in equal measure. 

Opening track Halo Of Ashes is all swirling, sitar-style riffs, driving Bonham-esque drums and the honey-liquor baritone of Mark Lanegan. The psychedelic power-rock of Sweet Oblivion is still very much present but this time it’s more refined, despite its frenetic, otherworldly energy. First single – and semi-hit – All That I Know comes next and this is Screaming Trees at their commercial best. A bouncing, upbeat psychedelic pop-rock groove that starts off sounding like an updated version of I Am The Walrus, with a chorus that sticks around long after the final chords have faded out. Lyrically, though, it hints at the darkness behind the magic: “Bite the thorn that pierced your skin, come back down to earth again, the cold is creeping deep inside, I’ll disconnect the telephone line”. Like Dollar Bill on Sweet Oblivion, Dying Days is a gospel-influenced deathbed plea wrapped in an uplifting, joyous swaggering ZEPPELIN-esque groove, with an astonishing vocal performance added in for good measure. Knowing the horrors of Lanegan’s lifestyle at this point makes it all the more poignant as he desperately opines “I’ll walk the ghost town that used to be my city. I’ve seen a holy man, seen him crying with the Mother Mary.” Second single Sworn And Broken highlights exactly why Screaming Trees should have been so much bigger than they were. It is a heartbreaking piece of Americana, shot through with smoky blues and aching harmonies and it sets them so far apart from the punky energy of NIRVANA and the doom metal complexities of SOUNDGARDEN and ALICE IN CHAINS, you wonder how this band ever came to be labelled as grunge. There is a timelessness in this music that suggests it could have been released at any point in the previous – or, in fact, subsequent – 30 years. In the same way as LED ZEPPELIN IV has taken on a life beyond both the decade and the band that produced it, looking back it’s easy to see Dust in the same light.

Sadly, the album’s success did nothing to heal the wounds that created it. The subsequent tour saw the band (now augmented by second guitarist Josh Homme in between his KYUSS and QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE eras) fall apart completely. The animosity continued, the tensions escalated and Lanegan’s addictions saw him frequently go AWOL on the road, looking for a fix. Despite not splitting officially until 2000, Dust was the end of SCREAMING TREES. The group fell apart, as slowly and as chaotically as they found success.

Lanegan would go on to find further success with a series of acclaimed solo albums, as well as guest appearances on numerous QOTSA recordings, but he never quite regained the powerful creative spark and energy of what were ultimately some of his darkest days. It is tragic that the group never quite found the success their hard work and intense passions deserved and that when that opportunity was finally put on a plate in front of them, they were too far gone to pick it up. Tragic, too, that an unlikely reunion is now entirely possible, with Lanegan and Van Conner sadly passing within a year of each other, in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

The story of SCREAMING TREES is that of a real underdog, though admittedly an underdog which could have done so much more if only it hadn’t spent so long chasing its own tail. Dust is the perfect epilogue to that story and, if anything, sounds even better today than it ever has.

Dust was originally released on June 25th, 1996 via Epic Records.

Like SCREAMING TREES on Facebook.