-
neumu
Thursday, March 28, 2024 
-
-
--archival-captured-cinematronic-continuity error-daily report-datastream-depth of field--
-
--drama-44.1 khz-gramophone-inquisitive-needle drops-picture book-twinklepop--
-
Neumu = Art + Music + Words
Search Neumu:  

illustration
44.1kHz = music reviews

edited by michael goldbergcontact




Editor's note: We have activated the Neumu 44.1 kHz Archive. Use the link at the bottom of this list to access hundreds of Neumu reviews.

+ Donato Wharton - Body Isolations
+ Svalastog - Woodwork
+ Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
+ Rosy Parlane - Jessamine
+ Jarvis Cocker - The Jarvis Cocker Record
+ Múm - Peel Session
+ Deloris - Ten Lives
+ Minimum Chips - Lady Grey
+ Badly Drawn Boy - Born In The U.K.
+ The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls Together
+ The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes
+ The Places - Songs For Creeps
+ Camille - Le Fil
+ Wolf Eyes - Human Animal
+ Christina Carter - Electrice
+ The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
+ Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye
+ Various Artists - Musics In The Margin
+ Rafael Toral - Space
+ Bob Dylan - Modern Times
+ Excepter - Alternation
+ Chris Thile - How To Grow A Woman From The Ground
+ Brad Mehldau - Live in Japan
+ M Ward - Post-War
+ Various Artists - Touch 25
+ The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
+ The White Birch - Come Up For Air
+ Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
+ Coachwhips - Double Death
+ Various Artists - Tibetan And Bhutanese Instrumental And Folk Music, Volume 2
+ Giuseppe Ielasi - Giuseppe Ielasi
+ Cex - Actual Fucking
+ Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
+ Leafcutter John - The Forest And The Sea
+ Carla Bozulich - Evangelista
+ Barbara Morgenstern - The Grass Is Always Greener
+ Robin Guthrie - Continental
+ Peaches - Impeach My Bush
+ Oakley Hall - Second Guessing
+ Klee - Honeysuckle
+ The Court & Spark - Hearts
+ TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
+ Awesome Color - Awesome Color
+ Jenny Wilson - Love And Youth
+ Asobi Seksu - Citrus
+ Marsen Jules - Les Fleurs
+ The Moore Brothers - Murdered By The Moore Brothers
+ Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
+ The 1900s - Plume Delivery EP
+ Alejandro Escovedo - The Boxing Mirror
+ Function - The Secret Miracle Fountain
+ Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
+ Loscil - Plume
+ Boris - Pink
+ Deadboy And The Elephantmen - We Are Night Sky
+ Glissandro 70 - Glissandro 70
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #2)
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #1)
+ The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
+ The Glass Family - Sleep Inside This Wheel
+ Various Artists - Songs For Sixty Five Roses
+ The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
+ Motorpsycho - Black Hole/Blank Canvas
+ The Red Krayola - Introduction
+ Metal Hearts - Socialize
+ American Princes - Less And Less
+ Sondre Lerche And The Faces Down Quartet - Duper Sessions
+ Supersilent - 7
+ Band Of Horses - Everything All The Time
+ Dudley Perkins - Expressions
+ Growing - Color Wheel
+ Red Carpet - The Noise Of Red Carpet
+ The Essex Green - Cannibal Sea
+ Espers - II
+ Wilderness - Vessel States

44.1 kHz Archive



peruse archival
snippet
    
artist
Screaming Trees
recording
Ocean Of Confusion
Epic/Legacy
snippet
rating


Any list of great "lost" bands ought to have Screaming Trees somewhere near the top. Fusing edgy, hardcore-inspired rock with swirling, '60s-influenced psychedelia, the band, originally from Washington State, signed to a major label after releasing four albums in the mid to late 1980s.

Over the course of three more albums during the first half of the 1990s, Screaming Trees honed their sound into a tight but edgy conflation of bludgeoning force and raw emotion, absorbing and re-shaping classic rock to fit their own needs. Singer Mark Lanegan evolved into a charismatic, soulful vocalist, and the band demonstrated its ability to work irresistible hooks into the raw roots of its sound. But unhappily Screaming Trees never achieved the kind of success they deserved: despite being in the right place at the right time to ride the immediate post-Nevermind wave of interest in all things flannel-shirted and noisy from the American Northwest, the band lost crucial momentum through persistent internecine strife and substance abuse, releasing a highly praised swan song, Dust, in 1996, and finally calling it a day following a reunion one-off gig four years later.

Any compilation is fraught with pitfalls: what to include, what to exclude, what kind of running order, etc., but Ocean of Confusion largely gets it right, if sometimes only by default due to the overall consistency of the band's material. Tracing a chronological progression, it begins with a 1990 EP track "Who Lies in Darkness," then moves on through a selection of four tracks from 1991's Uncle Anesthesia, which more or less captures the band's transitional sound of the time — retaining their bludgeoning psychedelia but tempering its rough edges with more considered arrangements. Even when the songs don't quite come off, they're rescued by the rolling momentum of the band's performance in general and by Gary Lee Connor's inventive guitar playing in particular, combining meaty, fuzzy riffs with spiraling but concise psychedelic solos. The seven songs lifted from 1992's Sweet Oblivion, however, represent the real meat of the matter. "Shadow of the Season" simply sounds awesome, its staccato-riff intro preceding a massive, rock-solid rhythm and Lanegan's deep, wounded growl of a vocal. Here the band's scrappier, fuzzed-up past is fused with timeless, monolithic rock, yielding triumphant results: the seismic shuffle of "Nearly Lost You" was also featured on the "Singles" soundtrack and was the closest the band came to a hit, while "Dollar Bill" sounds like Tim Rose fronting Hüsker Dü, with Lanegan's hoarse, tender vocals rising to an anguished peak to meet Lee Connor's massive guitar climax. "ESK," a contemporaneous non-album B side, is also included, though it's not quite up to the standard of the other Sweet Oblivion tracks.

Two previously unreleased songs from an aborted follow-up album session with Don Fleming, "Watchpocket Blues" and "Paperback Bible," fill in the chronology and are attractive bait for fans who might otherwise already have all this material. But they sound a bit vague, and Lanegan's voice is particularly strained, while the music itself comes over as a rather ordinary derivation of Zeppelinesque riffing. Fortunately the band came back from a lengthy hiatus with Dust in 1996. The sound was more polished and the hooks more evident, but although the album received copious critical appraisal at the time, here its songs sound relatively subdued. Two of the five songs from Dust collected here are ballads, and there's a sense that this emphasis is an attempt to align these latter-day Trees songs more closely with Lanegan's solo career, something echoed in the accompanying sleeve notes. But it means Ocean of Confusion ends on a quieter note than it perhaps should. Certainly the ode to dissolution that is "Dying Days" sounds suitably fired up, but the swathes of Mellotron bubbling up all over "The Traveler" are, to my mind, too ornamental, and an anticlimactic note on which to finish.

Ocean of Confusion is a reasonable primer, particularly if combined with SST's Anthology of the band's earlier work. But to experience Screaming Trees in their prime, listeners are urged to get hold of a copy of Sweet Oblivion, and turn up the volume.


by Tom Ridge




-
-snippetcontactsnippetcontributorssnippetvisionsnippethelpsnippetcopyrightsnippetlegalsnippetterms of usesnippetThis site is Copyright © 2003 Insider One LLC
-