Screaming Trees - Last Words: The Final Recordings

The Screaming Trees have a "new" album out. Last Words: The Final Recordings documents some recently mixed demos that the band recorded in 2000 while looking for a new record deal. That new deal never materialized, the band broke up, and the recordings sat on the shelf for eleven years until former Trees drummer Barrett Martin and producer Jack Endino mixed the songs this year. Martin has released the album through his own Sunyata Records label. At the moment the album is only available as a digital download, but CD and LP releases are reportedly in the works. It's currently available for the low, low price of $4.99 at Amazon, and if you don't buy it I'll never forgive you.

I first became aware of this release because my buddy Adam forwarded me a middling review of the album from Pitchfork. Typically, if the dudes at Pitchfork are lukewarm on something it turns out I love it, and this album is no exception. I suspect that if the Trees had been a big influence on The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Animal Collective, or best of all, Kanye West, their music might sound more relevant to Pitchfork tuned ears. But the Trees did something that is absolutely unforgivable from the perspective of your typical Pitchfork reviewer; they rocked. Righteously. And for some people that is just an inherently uncool thing to do.

The Screaming Trees did not create clever deconstructions of popular song forms, instead they embraced heavy, psychedelic rock, and pushed their music to its absolute limits while working squarely within the rock aesthetic. If that does not sound intellectual enough for you, maybe the Screaming Trees are not your kind of band. Personally, I love them, and I think this new album can stand proudly alongside Buzz Factory and Sweet Oblivion as one of the finest of their career.

You'll have to forgive my enthusiasm. I may be a little biased. I watched the Screaming Trees play to an audience of 12 people at a crummy club in Harrisburg, PA back in 1991. (At least four of the people in attendance that night arrived in my car.) If the Trees were disappointed with the turnout, you would never have known it from their performance. It sounded like they made up their minds that even if there were only 12 people in the audience, those 12 paying fans deserved to have their worlds' rocked just as surely as if there were thousands in the club. A few nights later I saw them perform a sold-out show at the old 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., and while they were again fantastic, I think they might have actually rocked harder that night in Harrisburg.

What does that mean? Maybe nothing, but I just like to tell the story because it gives you an idea of what a great, totally committed band the Screaming Trees were.

Most of the other reviews I've read of Last Words have been positive, although they invariably criticize the "warts and all" sound quality. Personally, I think this album sounds great. Yes, it's a touch murkier sounding than their Epic recordings, but it sounds cleaner than anything they released for SST or Sub-Pop. That's more than good enough for me. The album lacks the distracting little production flourishes that producer George Drakoulias brought to their final Epic album, Dust, but to my ears that is a good thing. It's long been my opinion that bands are far more likely to ruin an album through over-production than by leaving things a little on the raw side.

I have a simple criteria for whether an album sounds good or bad. If you constantly find yourself wanting to turn the volume down, you have a bad sounding album. I don't care about clarity, or subtle layering of textures, if my impulse is to turn the volume down, there is something wrong. By contrast, if you constantly find yourself adjusting the volume upwards, you have a good sounding album. By that standard, Last Words is a great sounding album. Every time I play it, I keep cranking the volume.

Nearly as important as the crankability factor, Last Words does not sound like a collection of random demos and left-overs, but plays start-to-finish like an honest-to-goodness album, with subtle shifts in tempo and mood. The songs are uniformly excellent, and Mark Lanegan's singing never sounded better. He had four solo albums under his belt at the time of these recordings, and the added depth of feeling he brings to the material is evident on such songs as "Ash Grey Sunday," "Revelator," and "Black Rose Way." Likewise, Van Connor's guitar playing sounds much less restrained and mannered than it had on 1996's Dust. Barrett Martin's drumming is well-served by the mix, and (as always) is incredibly engaging and propulsive. Meanwhile bassist Gary Lee Connor gets in some catchy bass patterns as well as helping keep things grounded. In addition, there are guest spots from Peter Buck and Josh Homme that thankfully never get in the way of the group dynamic. The Screaming Trees may have been nearing the end of their storied career, but Last Words does not sound like a dying gasp from an artistically spent force. If anything it sounds more vital in 2011 than it might have had it been released in 2000.

I really cannot recommend this album highly enough. I know this "review" is little more than fanboy drivel, but I am a big believer in not pretending to be "objective" about subjects that one's life experience makes it impossible to be objective about.

**UPDATE: For those who still love shiny silver discs, the CD now is available for pre-order from Sunyata Records.

Angst - Cry For Happy

Angst was a band that broke up at the wrong time. First of all, Joe Pope and Jon E. Risk had just hit their stride as songwriters with their last two albums, Mystery Spot (1987) and Cry For Happy (1988). Second, the sound they had stumbled on by this point, a mix country twang and alt-rock jangle informed by their hardcore roots, would become all the rage a couple years later after the release of Uncle Tupelo's No Depression (1990).

Uncle Tupelo often gets credit for being the first "alt-country" act, but bands like Angst and The Long Ryders had concocted a similar fusion during the mid-to-late eighties. So why did Uncle Tupelo kick off a movement while the music of Angst, The Long Ryders and others languished in obscurity? I'm not sure. Of course, in pop music timing is everything. There's also no doubt that good marketing can help, and I don't think Angst ever got any of that.

Whatever the reasons, Angst didn't sell a lot of records at the time, and all their albums are out-of-print today. It's a shame because their records are really quite good, especially the last two. I never saw Angst live, which makes me suspect they didn't tour the East Coast very often, because I was definitely a fan.

Trotsky Icepick - Baby

Trotsky Icepick was a Los Angeles underground supergroup of sorts, formed by songwriters Vitus Mataré (formerly of The Last) and Kjehl Johansen (100 Flowers, Urinals). Originally, the band planned to change names with every album, but keep the same album title. This resulted in two albums entitled Poison Summer, the first released by Danny and the Doorknobs in 1985, the second by Trotsky Icepick in 1986.

After the second Poison Summer album it became clear that this plan was impractical, and the band name Trotsky Icepick (originally only intended as a bad joke, "the ultimate earache," get it?) stuck.

Released on the SST label in 1988, Baby, is either the band's second or third album, depending on how you look at it. I also thought it was their best (although 1991's The Ultraviolet Catastrophe has one of the coolest album titles ever).

Because of my involvement with my college's radio station, I interviewed Mataré by phone shortly after Baby's release. Of course it's hard to remember what was said that long ago, and I know my memory is not 100% reliable. But a couple things stand out in my mind. I remember discussing his time with The Last, and his production/engineering work for other bands, including Angst. I specifically remember him telling me that although he literally did his recording in a studio he set up in his garage, he really hoped he didn't make the records sound like the work of a "garage band." He had never been happy with the lo-fi, garage rock sound of The Last's first album, L.A. Explosion, and was very serious about his work as an engineer. While he was obviously working on a limited budget, and not trying for a slick commercial sound, he also didn't want the production to stand in the way of the music. For the most part I think he succeeded in that regard; the production on Baby never gets in the way of the music, either by being too primitive or too slick.

I also asked him specifically about the song "bury manilow," which was getting a lot of airplay on our radio station at the time. An attack on the shallowness of pop music (and I guess specifically Barry Manilow), Mataré told me he considered the song a failure. I remember him telling me regretfully, "I picked too easy of a target." That may be true, but I don't think that's where the song fails. "bury manilow" actually succeeds too brilliantly as pop music in its own right to function as a credible critique of the form. The lyrics "Simple words and maybe a melody, It doesn't bug you driving your car" describe Mataré's bouncy, catchy song far better than it does anything by Barry Manilow. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

In contrast to Mataré's more pop-friendly concoctions, Kjehl Johansen's songs like "dante's flames" and "pillars of salt" have a more spiky, post-punk sound to them that was clearly influenced by British bands like Magazine and Joy Division (the band would cover Magazine's "The Light Pours Out Of Me" on their next album). These are fine songs too, but I tend to prefer Mataré's bouncy ditties, despite (or perhaps because of) his distinctive nasal vocals.

Long out-of-print, Baby is still available cheap on the used market. Recommended.

Meat Puppets - Rare Meat

The Meat Puppets were, in my opinion, one of the best bands of the 80s. I have sometimes seen them referred to as the originators of "cowpunk," which I think is a pretty silly term, and does not adequately describe their music. Yes, both country and punk music feature prominently in the Meat Puppets' sonic hybrid, but the 'Pups were a band that treated the various dividing lines between musical genres that the rest of us rely on to organize our record collections as if they simply didn't exist. I'm not sure if Duke Ellington would have dug the Meat Puppets or not, but his term "beyond category" certainly applies to their music.

The Meat Puppets have never gotten the respect they deserve. I recently found myself screaming at my television due to a slight against the band. I was channel surfing and stopped at an ABC special report on Satan or Hell or Satanism, or something. It looked pretty stupid. They interviewed Marylin Manson. Anyway, they briefly cut away to Kurt Cobain singing "Lake Of Fire" then in voice-over said something along the lines of, "Tortured soul and important artist Kurt Cobain wondered where bad folks go when they die, then he committed suicide." Despite the fact that my son was within earshot, I couldn't help but utter a string of obscenities: "You stupid %$$**!! Kurt Cobain didn't write that song! He was covering the Meat Puppets! Curt Kirkwood wrote that song!!!" With such sloppy and/or dishonest reporting from our network news organizations, is it any wonder so many Americans believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11? I turned off the TV and put on Meat Puppets II.

Like many bands from this period, the Meat Puppets recently reunited for a new album. Well, sort of; brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood are working together following Cris's release from prison, but drummer Derrick Bostrom is not involved. Bostrom does run the Meat Puppets excellent website, where he has made a compilation of rare Meat Puppets material available for download. The songs were compiled from various singles and promotional releases mostly during the band's tenure at London Records, but also featuring a few cuts from their SST years not represented on the Rykodisc album reissues, along with some material from Curt Kirkwood's brief faux-Meat Puppets tenure on Atlantic.

Bostrom's own blog, Bostworld, is very much worth checking out. As you might expect from someone who spent so much time in such a heterodox musical outfit, Bostrom's taste in music is all over the map. He currently has up all three albums by the Doodletown Pipers. He also has a post on The Klowns, a short-lived Jeff Barry soft-pop/bubblegum project involving musicians in Harlequin makeup. I planned to post on The Klowns at some point as well (and probably still will since it appears the music link in Derrick's post is no longer active). Derrick's writing is witty, intelligent and engaging.

Here are a couple tracks from the Rare Meat compilation, although I suspect you will want to just download the whole thing. "Up On The Sun" is one of my all-time Meat Puppet favorites, this version was a b-side on the "Backwater" CD-single. The acoustic version of "Lake Of Fire" (written by Curt Kirkwood not Kurt Cobain) was taken from a promotional CD.