CONCERT REVIEWS 02/09/1990 | reviewed in Melody Maker, 3 March 1990 Screaming Trees / TAD / Nirvana Pine Street Theatre, Portland, USA It seems incredible people still miss the point of Tad. Most (heavy) rock bands play for the sheer hell of it, and, sure Tad do that too, but the suffocating density of Tad's sound emanates from the man himself, his anguish and his turmoil. And, because of it, Tad play the fiercest, most unsettling, one-dimensional trash you're ever likely to encounter. There's something ennobling about the way Tad constantly throws himself against the limits of his psychotic sound; furiously, unrelentingly battering at his guitar. Occasionally, his songs can bludgeon you into thinking they've surpassed their structures - the mighty "Behometh", where the very earth is wrenched asunder, or "Wood Goblins", claustrophobic in its fluency - but it's the very tangible presence of frustration, of being the eternal outsider, of never quite achieving, which gives his songs their worrisome edge. People who consider Tad as some joke/freakshow should look deep inside themselves; he is the revenge of redneck Americana, howling its distaste at a straight-edged world. Nirvana, also, are nowhere near as straightforward as their Sixties roots would allow - Motorhead gone pop, Led Zep turned punk, 30 years of US soil plundered by guitars, as plagiarised by this ungainly trio's thunderous whisper. Their songs - particularly the stunningly harmonic "About A Girl", and "Blew", from their last single - have so much wrapped inside them to latch onto; angst, the idea of never belonging to, small-town bigotry, frustrating at the mating game, isolation (both personal and geographical), hopes, envy, despair. On the other hand, by covering The Vaselines's apocryphal "Molly's Lips", Nirvana show an instinctive understanding on the joys of rock'n'roll normally taken to far greater, more horrendous extremes. Kurdt smashes his guitar by throwing it into the drumkit at the finale, six-footer Chris loops around on stage, blind fury on the bass. Nirvana, in their impotency and overwhelming hatred (which sometimes verges on misogyny), create a pop noise equalled only this side of Dinosaur Jr. And so, after a brief non-musical interlude from The Legend! (who collected $1.71 from the stage after the show), including the classing forthcoming Sub Pop single, "Do Nuts" ("Do nuts/Do nuts/Hey diddle diddle/I wonder if I can get some nice round do nuts/The ones with the holes in the middle"), Screaming Trees disappoint, their shivering rushes of noise dragged down by structures which are too similar throughout. Mark Lanegan hugs the mike like a kid who never realised Jimmy Page was uncool, while the Conner brothers - more than a match for Tad when taken together - roll around the stage and jump like a herd of bison, with grisly abandon. The new single, "Change Has Come", bristles with psychotic relief, and some of "Buzz Factory" connects with a venomous power startling to witness, but, taken as a whole, their abandoned metallic feral cry disappears into a howling morass of feedback, unwilling to drag itself any further. Screaming Trees play like a band on the brink of self-destruction, but the fruits of destruction are bitter indeed. by Everett True 03/08/1991 | reviwed in Sounds, April 6 1991 Screaming Trees/Nirvana Vancouver Commodore Ballroom Oh, Seattle's not so fun anymore. It's the big music mecca cos we've broken all these great bands, and now, for that very reason, we never get to see them anymore cos they're always on tour. Which leaves us, predictably, with lots of mediocre bands who exist solely because, as "Seattle bands", they can get away with it. So tonight's a big deal, the first Northwest shows as major label artists by the always underrated Screaming Trees, and Nirvana, who's quickly becoming the greatest band on Earth. Seattle's finest, literally. Kicking off tonight with an adjective-defying greatest hits triad of 'Love Buzz', 'Sliver'' and 'Dive', Nirvana set the tone for a relentless and crowd pleasing evening. They forgo some of their best covers (The Wipers' 'D-7' especially) as well as their more (yep) melodic and instantly memorable newer stuff (the unreleased 'In Bloom' and 'Immodium' are actually requested) but do play everything on 'Bleach', to the delight of a whopping 1,500 fans. Bassist Chris really is amazing, a lumbering giant banging so hard he's even breaking strings, while new drummer Dave Grohl is a real find, raising the intensity level still more. And Kurdt, proudly sporting his Sounds sweatshirt, is at his most orgasmic, moving me to later drunkenly promise to do his dishes for a week if he'll just sing me a page of the phone book. Big mistake, but what the hell. Speaking of drummers (and we were), expectations are high for the Trees' new one, Dan Peters, on permanent loan from Mudhoney. And what a difference a Dan makes! Bringing a distinctive flourish to their sexy and pliable Cream/Doors sound, he kicks these songs into wailing Mudhoneyesque overdrive. A good anchor is welcome, too, what with an overly wah wahed Gary Lee's fetal writhing and hurling his hefty bod onto the crowd. A blast to watch, but sloppy and a bit Spinal Tap-ish. By contrast, singer Mark Lanegan (he of brooding delivery and last year's sensitive solo opus) is even sillier, fill of mock-Morrisonisms, stumbling for his mineral water, hunched over and caressing the mike stand, expressionless the whole while. Please. And yes, he's all twilight, shadows and staircases, but the romantic and gritty tunes are mini-masterpieces of controlled psychedelic insanity, ranging from the pretty and perhaps too Doors-y 'Bed Of Roses' and 'Disappearing' to the Ride-like collidopop of 'Ocean Of Confusion' and 'Alice Said'. Mr "Encore? Never!" Lanegan ends the set abruptly, a downer till Van Conner saves the day. Having just come off a brief bass stint with Dinosaur Jr, the poor guy isn't exactly dealing with rational singers lately, so who can blame him for taking matters into his own hands. "Hey folks, this is Matt and Steve. They're in a band called Mudhoney." (Psychotic crowd squeals.) And right into a massive version of 'In 'N' Out Of Grace', Van playing Howling Rock God on the drum riser, and the rest of 'em ending up in a sweaty heap. Some loser rubbing his snot in my face calls it "the penultimate Seattle rock experience". Guess so. - by Nils Bernstein 10/31/1996 | reviewd in Kerrang!, 16 Nov 1996 Live: SCREAMING TREES, The Riverside, Newcastle (UK), October 31 1996 by Liam Sheils SCREAMING TREES: TRUNK AND DISORDERLY Mark Lanegan is something of a legend. He appears scruffy, wasted and withdrawn, moving with the energy of a man who has just mainlined Domestos. His eyes remain clamped shut for the duration, and he speaks just once - a perfunctory "thank you" - leaving his bass playing sidekick Van Conner to do all the talking. So you'd think Screaming Trees would be struggling, but they're not - they're just walking it tonight. Lanegan's amazingly languid vocals still sound like liquid sandpaper, and those songs are, after all, heaven-sent. After Lanegan's disturbing demeanour, the next thing you notice is Van's guitar playing brother Gary Lee firing up 'Shadows' by carving out giant arcs with his right arm like some over-inflated Pete Townshend. Across the stage stands a stranger in a white shirt. "This is Josh, from the band Kyuss," explains Van. "He's going to be helping us out a little." At first, as 'Dying Days' and 'Winter Song' are doled out roughly but with charm and grace, it's not entirely obvious why Screaming Trees need help from Josh Homme to do this stuff. Then 'Halo Of Ashes' rolls up and his purpose becomes clear as he serves up the beef, while Conner pours over the delectable arabesque, Doors-y bits with the help of an ungainly device that is part-guitar, part-mandolin, and sounds like an electric sitar. 'Gospel Plow' and 'Julie Paradise' round off the sub-one hour show with Lanegan on autopilot, and the encore routine brings just 'Bed Of Roses' before the unaffable frontman pisses off altogether, leaving drummer Barrett Martin to vocalise a couple of Devo covers, 'Gut Feeling' and 'Slap Your Mammy'. They're fun, but we would much rather have heard 'Dollar Bill' or 'Butterfly' or any one of the six tunes from the exceptional 'Dust' album that go unplayed. Screaming Trees are responsible for some of the most beautiful and subtly powerful rock music ever written, and live sightings over here are rarer than flying chickens. This should have been THE rock event of the year, and but for Lanegan's diffidence it would have been. Most rocking moment: The classic 'Nearly Lost You'. Least rocking moment: Van Conner insisting a punter who shouts "You fat bastard" is ejected. Verdict: Should have been magical (4 out of 5). 11/xx/1996 | reviewed in NME, 16 Nov 1996 Live review: SCREAMING TREES, Nottingham Rock City (UK) by Paul Moody TAKE A BOUGH Sunday night in Rock Valhalla and all is well. Gordon-esque bouncers, blinded by the lights, stare distractedly toward the balcony and fall into coma-like reveries about the time Lemmy gobbed appreciatively in their beer on the Ace Of Spades tour back in '80. The crowd, huddled into what looks like one enormous grey-black T-shirt (*just* like on the Persil ads), mass together in a ragged semi-circle and huddle round their lighters for warmth. It's been a long vigil, after all. Nearly ten years in the field as pre-grunge sleaze bag rockers part excellence and still Mark Lanegan and co remain largely unknown to the world at large; despite the endless tales of them having been responsible for most of the US drug intake during that time and having been burned out and scuzzed up so many times nobody thought they were ever gonna make it back out of (tree) surgery alive. The Trees, of course, ain't here for our sympathy. At 9:15 prompt, while we're still rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, they lumber on in all their glory. Guitarist Gary Lee Conner appears to have been replaced by a plaid-hag Giant Haystacks. So does bassist Van Conner, a man who grins so much he *must* know something we don't. And there, squeezed between the two of them, you can just make out stick-thin Mark Lanegan, mumbling something about having a sore throat and then growling into 'Shadow Of The Season' like his ill-health depends upon it. And then things go ballistic. Before there's even time to come to terms with the fact that the Trees' music owes twice as much to the sonic astro-blues overload of the late '60s as their clothes owe to crappo, thrift-store slackerdom, the entire population of Rock City is heaving up and down in one synchronised pogo and the reinforced stage is buckling under the strain of Gary Lee's Zebedee impersonations. Cripes! Plus, every time they thunder into anything off the extraordinarily fine 'Dust' LP ('Halo Of Ashes', 'Dying Days', a titanic 'All I Know') they end up sounding like the American stadium-rock group you always wanted, heavy on the psych-out acid-riffola and short on the Black Sabbathisms. They are, in short, Spiritualized after two years' incarceration in the Seattle branch of Burger King while being forced to listen to piped Led Zeppelin 24 hours a day. Alright, so they end with a slightly lacklustre trawl through 'Winter Song' and 'Nearly Lost You' where Mark's voice packs up completely and heads, five minutes early, toward the dressing room, but you can hardly blame it. It is Sunday night at Rock City after all. So celebrate! Screaming Trees have the antidote to The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden and all other would-be-post-grunge world slayers and for that alone we should be extremely thankful. 11/xb/1996 | reviewed in Melody Maker, 16 Nov 1996 Live review: SCREAMING TREES, Newcastle Riverside (UK) by Neil Kulkarni AYE, THERE'S THE SHRUB! For a gig you might've expected to be a pissed-up, beery slop, all bum-notes and chaos, it's all in the subtleties of feel. This is the only way you can explain why Screaming Trees will never be a household name writ large across a million T-shirts. They have made the best rock album of the year - no question - and the confines of this place should be too small for their global anthems-in-waiting. You can see no earthly reason why they aren't the biggest rock band on the planet; you realise how Chris Cornell or Eddie Vedder or even James Hetfield would kill to write anything that's played tonight. It feels impertinent to be 10 feet from the stage; you feel you ought to be two miles back and craning your neck over a sea of hands out there. This is like standing next to God at a urinal, bumping into Krishna down the launderette. And you have to find a reason, Why here, why now? And the answer's deep snobbishness doesn't matter. Screaming Trees are just too good to be huge, to be spread thin. This music, these songs, are too hard fought for to have the immediate simplicity MTV and its raw teen audience require. I'm not saying the huge audience the Trees should have are simply too stupid to grasp them; I think they're just too young to fully identify with Mark Lanegan's mordant bitterness, his almost mystical resignation. Everything is in place tonight for Just Another Rock Show, but the Trees, perversely (naturally) have to take things beyond the simple stimulus-response of riff and power and into something approaching magic and mathematics. "Shadow Of The Season", which kicks off tonight, is just too dark, too pulverisingly propelled to have ever been their "Teen Spirit", no matter how much you might want it to be. "Nearly Lost You" soon follows, a constant skipped groove of explosions and fades, while "Halo Of Ashes" rises horribly/wonderfully out of itself, shedding its rhythmic weight to cruise a wave of pure, stunningly executed feedback for a good minute, leaving the moshpit static, shocked in awe. "Dollar Bill" wrings tears from our drunken lungs; "All I Know" has Gary Conner writhing like a child in his own genius; "Butterfly" reminding too many of us of '92 and nights lost in sweet oblivion. "Make My Mind" launches itself, so blazing with heart-tugging hooks you're left gasping at Lanegan's steely nonchalance in its whirlpool, "The Secret Kind" and "Winter Song" take you to the point of emotional exhaustion before "Gospel Plow" finishes you off, speechless and hopeless now, just scattered around like a leaf, mouth lolling in abject surrender. Hell, maybe it's just bad luck, airplay, image, the usual. Me, I'm filing Screaming Trees next to those bands beamed in from Venus whose sheer greatness seemed to actually stop them at the door to the success they deserved; Rex, Thin White Rope, Shudder To Think, Shiva Burlesque. Tonight was an intimate, heart-stopping lurve-thang and I'd like to keep it that way. When they get Xmas Number One, feel free to scoff at my repellent elitism. This is a beautiful, beautiful thing. This is unforgettable. 09/07/1998 - Bumbershoot Festival | reviewed in Wall of Sound The Screaming Trees show, held in the blistering afternoon sun at the Memorial Stadium, didn't suffer from lukewarm attendance or attendants. Seattle has long awaited the return of their local yokels, and the prodigal sons did not disappoint. Sounding better than anyone had a right to expect, the Trees put to rest any suggestion that extended separations or solo albums have taken any toll on their collective power. The Conner brothers (Van and Gary Lee), looking dapper with trimmed 'dos; drummer Barrett Martin; and singer Mark Lanegan, long locks shorn and hidden beneath a baseball cap, and occasionally R.E.M.-Tuatara member Peter Buck, were on fire. Their set list spanned their career: older numbers ("Where the Twain Shall Meet"), radio hits ("Nearly Lost You"), eerie tunes ("Shadow of the Season"), and later tracks ("All I Know") were all represented. Lanegan's voice was full and resonant, the trademark gruff-rasp searing far beyond its recorded counterpart. Amidst rumors that this could be one of their last shows, the band played like the world was ending-dashing the crowd with its own unique brand of sinister creep-rock. -Kathy Mar 09/11/1998 | reviewed by Sonicnet Screaming Trees Come Screeching Back With Grunge Screaming Trees' retro-fied set includes songs from their recent album, Dust. Contributing Editor Tricia Boland reports: SAN FRANCISCO -- If you closed your eyes at the Screaming Trees show at Club Townsend on Friday night, you could have easily been transported back to the grunge glory days of 1992. The Screaming Trees may have traded in their plaid flannel shirts and cut their hair, but musically, they still embody the Seattle scene from which they emerged in the early '90s. Taking the stage following a self-indulgent, rambling opening set by ex-Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt, the Trees slammed into "Halo of Ashes," filling the air with the grunge-rock sound that their small, but dedicated, following had come to hear. Bathed in red and green light, lead singer Mark Lanegan delivered a moody, engaging performance. He rarely addressed the crowd and seemed welded to his mic stand. The mostly twentysomething crowd reacted to his demeanor with a sense of contained emotion, although Lanegan's stance made him look more like a self-conscious model than a singer. The Screaming Trees' set highlighted material from their most popular albums, including 1992's breakthrough release, Sweet Oblivion, and the more recent Dust, which came out in 1996. The crowd's intensity went through the ceiling when the band launched into its most familiar tune, "Nearly Lost You." Guitarist Gary Lee Conner, dressed in a bright-red button-down shirt, displayed an energy that belied his hefty size, jumping around to the beat and flailing his right arm like an out-of-control windmill a la famed Who axeman Pete Townshend. Compared to the inactivity of Lanegan, Connor resembled a kid with a bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder who had forgotten to take his Ritalin. The tight, synchronized jamming of guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Van Conner further accentuated Lanegan's morose demeanor. Taking their cue from the Conner brothers, more than 100 fans transformed the dance floor into a sea of gyrating bodies. The enthusiasm lasted throughout the set as the band continued to deliver its old-school grunge rock, including such memorable numbers as "All I Know," "Butterfly" and "Dying Days." As the band returned for its encores, Van Conner knocked back a Corona, took a drag from his cigarette and reminded the delighted crowd that the Screaming Trees "came to play." The Trees then churned out six more tunes, including "Julie Paradise" and "Shadow of the Season." The highlight of the encores was the debut of a new song, "Ash Grey Sunday," a mix of piercing guitar riffs and heavy drums that seemed to be a not-so-distant cousin of the sound that made the Screaming Trees an integral part of the grunge scene. While that song and other new material were marked by Lanegan's smooth, throaty voice, it all seemed much the same as the band's standard rock attacks. However, this constancy appears to keep some of the concert-goers loyal to the Screaming Trees. "What I like is that they are true to their sound. They take two guitars and turn 'em all the way up," said Tom Delgado, 27, of San Francisco. 9/12/1998 | reviewed in Los Angeles Weekly Screaming Trees at the Roxy. Named Rolling Stones "Hot Band of 1996," Ellensburg, Washingtons Screaming Trees have actually been making amazing psych-rock records for over a decade; 1992s Sweet Oblivion and 1996s Dust caught some commercial momentum from the grunge/alternative tail winds, but discerning heads have been banging to the mesmerizing likes of Invisible Lantern and Buzz Factory since the late-80s. Rumored to be finished in the wake of interpersonal squabbles and singer Mark Lanegan's heroin addiction, the band is happily still together; Lanegan, who recently released the harrowing Scraps at Midnight solo LP, has finally cleaned up his act, and peace once again reigns in the forest. Currently without a label (they just parted ways with Epic), the Trees are playing a small string of headlining dates on the West Coast; as Epic insisted on having the band open stadium dates for bozos like the Spin Doctors, this marks the first time the Trees have played a local club date in at least five years. Dont miss 'em. (Dan Epstein) [more articles]