Sweet Oblivion Press Release The great strength of the post-punk indie rock of the American Northwest lies in its endless variety: Rarely has any "rock movement" produced so many conflicting strains of noise. Amidst this sonic jumble, Screaming Trees stand alone. If "classic rock" had somehow been nurtured by blood and guts instead of a corporate watering can, the result would be SWEET OBLIVION, the new Epic album by Screaming Trees (released September`92). Of course, the Trees themselves are far too modest to make such claims, indisputable though they may be. Lead singer and lyricist Mark Lanegan gently declines to explain the ideas and inspirations behind such stellar SWEET OBLIVION songs as "No One Knows," "Julie Paradise," "Nearly Lost You" (the first single) and "Shadow Of The Season." Suffice to say that the sound of SWEET OBLIVION conveys a rare sense of soul and passion, along with influences ranging from Free and the Small Faces to George Jones and Charlie Patton. "I don't want to limit anyone by my interpretation of a song," says Lanegan. "What I get out of a song may not be exactly what the writer intended, if in fact the writer intended anything at all. I'll put my trust in the listener's imagination." "A lotta times I don't know what he's singing about," bassist Van Conner admits. "It just sounds good with the music. It's kind of embarrassing to talk about `cos the lyrics are so personal." Lanegan will allow that "the way we made this album was very different from our other records. We wrote the songs together as a group, which we hadn't done in a long time. In the past, it was every man for himself: You brought in your songs, and everybody else learned from your demo. This time everybody was together, and we made a much better record as a result." "Almost all these songs were written about three months before we started recording We set aside time every single day to write together. It was fun--the band kind of became friends again." SWEET OBLIVION is the first Screaming Trees record to be recorded in New York and the first to be produced by Don Fleming, the ex- Dinosaur Jr. who's gone on to work with Teenage Fan Club, Hole, and his own bands Gumball and Velvet Monkeys. The album was recorded by John Agnello and mixed by Andy Wallace. "In most ways, Don is just like one of us," enthuses Van Conner. "He's this amazing combination of the total unprofessional fuck-up and the total rock dude talkin' the lingo on the cellular phone to the record company guys." "Don was able to make the music sound full and big, but still leave the rough edges on it so it still had something of the live sound," Van continues. "On Uncle Anesthesia [their Epic label debut album], we tried to make everything perfect and kinda lost the live feel. But on a song like `Julie Paradise' you can hear Lee pounding the hell out of his guitar and actually throwing it around the room...Don would make new guitar parts out of mistakes." Three of the Trees--Mark Lanegan, Gary Lee Conner and brother Van Conner--were rocked in the cradle of Ellensburg, Washington, an agricultural dot nestled in the Pacific Northwest where the coolest thing in town was the Conner family's video store. Mark met Van in a high school journalism class, where the two would trade info on the weird punk records they had to ride two hours on the bus to Seattle to acquire. Later on, Van crashed a college kegger: "I was unwelcome there. I had no hair and looked different from everybody else." Seeking out a familiar face in an unfamiliar situation, he bumped into Mark. "He bit me on the ear and said, `Let's start a band.'" The soon-to-be Screaming Trees set up rehearsal in the garage behind the Conner video store. Mrs. Conner twisted Van's arm until he allowed older brother Gary Lee to join the group as a bass player. "He was a better musician than me," Van admits. "Somehow we wound up switching instruments. It's kinda like the Kinks' situation." For the first couple of months, Mark recalls, "we were doing cover tunes, but I didn't show up very often." Then Gary Lee got a four-track tape deck and "actually started writing things that sound like songs. Lanegan said, `We should play some of these things.' Something clicked." In 1984, Screaming Trees recorded six songs with producer Steve Fisk at Velvetone Records, Ellensburg's sole indie label. (That first demo eventually became the Other Worlds EP, released in 1988 on SST Records.) Screaming Trees became compulsive documentarian of their own rapidly evolving sound(s). Velvetone issued the band's first full-length album, Clairvoyance, in 1986. Lee: "We gave a tape to Greg Ginn at a Black Flag show. Steve Fisk knew Ray Farrell of SST, so Ray came down to our show in L.A. and got into it. He went back and told Ginn about it." In 1987, the Fisk-produced Even If And Especially When became Screaming Trees' first album for SST. "They allowed us to be a real band and put out records," says Lee. "That tricked us into thinking this was some sort of career!" Meanwhile, Screaming Trees played whenever and wherever they could, including two tours of Europe. Signed to Epic in 1990, SWEET OBLIVION is the third Screaming Trees release for the label following the EP Something About Today (1990) and the Epic debut album Uncle Anesthesia (1991). Having gone through a couple of drummers--including Mark Pickerel (now running a record store in the Conner family's video complex in Ellensburg) and Mudhoney tubs-pounder Dan Peters--Screaming Trees recruited ex-Skin Yard Barrett Martin in December `91. Martin calls the Trees' material "especially the new record...by far the best music I've ever been involved with." No wonder: SWEET OBLIVION is simply the best music Screaming Trees have ever made. Copyright © Sony Music Entertainment Inc. [ more articles ]