It's been a hell of a long time coming, but the new album from Screaming Trees has been well worth the wait. It also looks like taking the band into the long-overdue big-time. "I don't really know why things have started to click for us in the way they have right now," mystified Tree Van Conner tells Grahame Bent.

While the history books will record that it was Nirvana who kick-started the grunge revolution, and in the process dramatically marked the arrival of the Pacific Northwest on the major-league rock map, it's worth remembering that fellow Northwesterners Screaming Trees were already winning glowing reviews for their inspired combination of grit, guts and melody while Kurt & co. were still feeling their way towards the sort of fame that would see their name emblazoned on T-shirts everywhere from New York to Newcastle.

In these days of homogenised corporate rock clones, Seattle-based Screaming Trees are that increasingly rare beast - a band with an instantly recognisable sound. Theirs is a unique sound born of their ability to blend hard-edged, riff-based rock with a shimmering melodic wash and more than the occasional hint of all things psychedelic, with vocalist Mark Lanegan's huskily reflective voice the perfect foil for the pumped-up guitar mayhem orchestrated by the unstoppable Conner brothers.

"Hey, I've got a fuckin' black eye, a fucked-up ankle, I cut my lip and I've got scratches all over my body..." No, not a catalogue of injuries sustained in some rowdy bar-room brawl somewhere in the badlands, but Van Conner's personal inventory of knocks and scrapes picked up while on the road doing his bit as an integral part of rock's walking wounded that is Screaming Trees. Shucks, life can be tough in the hard rock fast lane...

With a new album, 'Dust' (Epic), just out, and currently ripping up stages and igniting PA systems the length and breadth of the States on the Lollapalooza package tour spectacular, the Trees' presence on the bill alongside Metallica, Soundgarden, Rancid and the Ramones is just the latest hint that the band's time has finally come.

Sitting comfortable in his hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona, Screaming Trees' affable, bass-wielding giant Van Conner gives the lowdown on his experience of the Lollapalooza circus so far.

"I've gotta say it's been one of my favourite tours we've ever done, and that's because the crowds have been so responsive everywhere we've gone. By the time we go on, people are already packed right up to the stage, so by the time we're hitting the third or fourth song in the set they're pretty much full-on. We go on second on the Main Stage, right before the Shaolin fighting monks get to do their thing - those guys are totally wild. And that's just perfect for us, because it's the best slot of the day to have. Put it this way: Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine and the Rollins Band all had that slot on previous tours, and it seems like it's still the place to be.

"The first band starts things off while the crowd are still coming in, but by the time we get to them they're already warmed up and ready to go, and they're still fresh. They're saying it's gonna be 108 degrees when we walk out on stage today *and* it's gonna be unusually humid - it's gonna be totally insane. A couple of days ago Mark was burning up, so he stripped off on stage - he took all his clothes off apart from his boxers, and then threw everything, including his wallet, into the crowd. He was singing 'Troubled Times' while he was on the ground pulling his socks off. It was hilarious, perfect.

"We originally wanted to do Lollapalooza when 'Sweet Oblivion' came out ['92]," Conner continues, "but it didn't happen, so we really wanted to do it this time. And everything just seemed to work out really well, because the new record only came out a couple of days before the tour started out. We had heard some rumours and read some reports that we were one of the bands on the final shortlist, then we got a phone call and that was it - we were gonna be vacationing on Lollapalooza. It might have had something to do with the fact that we'd sent our new record to everybody, and for once people seemed to like it."

And few surprises there. When all is said and done, Screaming Trees have dug deep into their reserves and, with 'Dust', have come up with what has to be without question *the* outstanding rock album of the year so far. 'Dust' is that rarest of finds - an album you're happy to let play all the way through, from first track till last, not through any paralytic sense of apathy but because of the trademark strength and quality of the Trees' songwriting and performance, which, as ever, speaks so volubly for itself.

Not that this is anything new. Since their formation a decade or so back in the sleepy obscurity of the small provincial backwater of Ellensburg, Washington State, the Trees have made a habit of releasing album after album of high quality, psychedelic-hued, hearty guitar rock, among them 'Even If And Especially When', 'Invisible Lantern', 'Buzz Factory' and 'Change Has Come'.

Prior to the arrival of what is commonly seen as the band's breakthrough album, 'Sweet Oblivion', some four years ago, Screaming Trees weren't so much an acquired taste as one of US indie rock's best-kept secrets. Critically praised in the American and European rock press, but remaining largely unknown outside a small but loyal fan-base, 'Sweet Oblivion' proved to be the catalyst that propelled the band towards the upper echelons of the post-grunge rock hierarchy, and at last marked them out for some long-overdue commercial success. The band then spent the best part of two years touring the States and Europe, before setting about gearing themselves up for the writing and recording of their next album, that was destined to build spectacularly on the success of its predecessor. At least that's the way the script read.

Unfortunately, reality got in the way as the impact of months of endless touring began to take its toll on the four band members, resulting in an entire album's worth of material being written, recorded and then scrapped as the Trees opted to apply the brakes, take some time out, and spend some time apart in an effort to recharge their batteries. Thankfully, it was to prove the right decision in the long run, with 'Dust' the more than adequate proof that in this case it was wise of the band to follow their instincts.

"No matter what label we find ourselves on, whether it's indie or major," the bassist explains, "their attitude has always been, 'Call us when your record's done.' And that's why it really wasn't such big a deal to go and record a whole album, then go back, scrap it and do a whole new album.

"You know, it gets real hard to write songs with the same people over and over again, because eventually you just run dry of ideas. And when that happens you've just got to go off and experience some living and stuff, to get some new ideas into your head. So I guess what all that means is that it took us some time to get some living in after we came off the 'Sweet Oblivion' tour. We had what we thought was going to be the new album about a year ago, but in the end we weren't very happy with the way it was turning out so we decided to take some time off.

"What happened," Van explains, "was we started thinking we needed two or three more songs so we went off and wrote a whole bunch of great ones. But 'Dying Days', the title track from the original album, just kept on fitting the bill and it always made it back onto the final tracklisting of the new record. It ended up a whole lot different from the original though; we added a lot of parts, slowed it down, and stuck on the intro.

" 'Dust' is the best of three years' worth of our songwriting - we actually had over 400 songs written - so the finished album is only 10 out of 400. Nobody believes me when I tell them this. I ain't shittin' ya! Sometimes we write a song a day - and there's a lot of days in three years!

"We'd always wanted to work with [producer] George Drakoulias, and we had to wait until he'd finished working on the Tom Petty box set. During that time we wrote a couple of more songs, and then flew down to LA and worked through the songs in a rehearsal studio. We thought we were going to do that for a week, and we wound up doing it for three. Then we went to Capitol Studios to work on drum tracks. We thought that would be for five days, and it ended up being two weeks. And so on and so on. But it was fun. We were excited doing it. It's difficult when you're away from home for a long time, but it allowed us to really focus on what we were doing. And I think it shows in the quality of the songs.

"We didn't go out and party like we did on the last record, where we set out to sample the full range of New York's decadence. This time we were confined to the studio, but it wasn't a problem. We were shut away from the world and were pushing ourselves to not even give a fuckin' shit what anybody thought about what we were doing. If anybody ever made us think to ourselves, 'Is this weird?' we'd just go do it! It was all about not being afraid to go over the top about shit. We've always been like that live. 'Sweet Oblivion' was a bit more like that than our earlier records, but I think we pushed it even further this time. We'd always wanted to record songs like 'Halo Of Ashes' and 'Gospel Plow', and I think we've pretty much pulled it off."

No-one could ever accuse Screaming Trees of being hot new kids on the block, desperate to cash-in on rock's latest money-spinning fad. These guys have been around way too long for any of that bullshit. And what's more, while their contemporaries have come and gone, the Trees have resolutely stuck to their guns and are still doing what they've always done, while taking time to refine and perfect the balance of ingredients with each subsequent release.

They've always had their audience, albeit previously on a smaller scale than the way things are these days. So why should a band now in their tenth year as recording artists, and whose sound hasn't changed much with the passing of time, suddenly find themselves breaking through in a seriously major way: big sales, big tours, big all-round visibility. There's just no escaping the unstoppable but overdue rise of the Screaming Trees.

"I don't really know why things have started to click for us in the way they have right now," Van concedes. "We haven't really changed; I think we've always tried to make our best record every time. During our first few years we made records because we had a way of getting them released. Sometimes we'd work on an album and put everything into it, and then the next time we'd just throw the songs on the tape and get it the fuck out! But I think we changed all that with the last record ['Sweet Oblivion'] and this new one.

"They're two great records; they're complimentary yet they're different from each other. I think they sit together sort of like [Sabbath's] 'Volume 4' and 'Sabotage'. At least that's the way it is for me. I don't think either of them is a 'Paranoid'; maybe 'Masters Of Reality', but certainly not 'Paranoid'.

"Looking back, 'Sweet Oblivion' was something of a slow crawl. But it was great for us to come that far, because earlier on we had thought we were on top of the world when we left SST. Our previous albums on SST, 'Invisible Lantern' and 'Buzz Factory', had been number one on US college radio, and we thought that was as far as it went for us, because there was nowhere else for us to go. So breaking up became a very real option after the 'Change Has Come' mini-album came out on Sub Pop."

Enter Epic Records, who rescued the band from a future of continued critical acclaim hamstrung by small-time success when they released the Trees' major-label debut, 'Uncle Anesthesia'. And the rest as 'Dust' now proves is all history...

With showtime and a high-energy encounter with that expected blood-boiling high temperature approaching fast, Van's talk moves back to matters in hand.

"One hundred and eight degrees? That's just insane. I don't know if my brain's gonna work in that sort of heat. But, you know, the best thing about Lollapalooza is you only ever get to do one soundcheck, and that's at rehearsal. I don't ever want to do a soundcheck again. Right now things are starting to get real AC/DC - we just keep turning everythin' up and up and up. And it works as long as you've got great amps... and we've got great amps!"

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