Many of their Seattle peers ended up disgraced, drunk, or dead, so it's a testament to the strength of the record industry in the early 1990s that selling a couple hundred thousand albums cast Screaming Trees as grunge's hard luck story. Featured on the definitive Singles soundtrack, evergreen psych-rock jam "Nearly Lost You" smeared its wah-wah guitar solos and the alluring dusk of Mark Lanegan's vocals all over MTV. But the band couldn't capitalize: Sweet Oblivion had already been out for months, and its ensuing tour resulted in more turmoil than triumph. Four years later, Dust was a very strong follow-up whose staunch classic rock sound made it a critical hit and a commercial non-starter on alt-rock radio. Screaming Trees more or less confirmed that for all of its anti-image posturing, grunge was still about fashion: Having never been embraced as reluctant, PC-friendly sex symbols or drunken lumberjacks (rumors persist that label execs tried to force out at least one of the hulking Conner brothers), the band called it quits in 2000 and went their separate ways in a manner that didn't leave much to the imagination until now*.*
Last Words: The Final Recordings was put to tape during 1998 and 1999 at Stone Gossard's studio, features guitar work from Peter Buck and Josh Homme, and was recently mixed and mastered by Jack Endino, but it arrives without much fanfare: It's being released on drummer Barrett Martin's label with tentative plans for physical distribution and, unsurprisingly, Screaming Trees have no plans to reunite. Musically, it's streamlined and aerodynamic, the sort of thing you might expect as a "back to basics" move from a band getting together for the first time in over a decade, not one making the follow-up to Dust. But was that direction even really necessary back then? Though they waited until their sixth album to incorporate ambitious signifiers like sitar, tabla, and Mellotron, Dust was hardly the sound of a band gone off the deep end. More pointedly, the parameters for "basics" set forth here never existed for Screaming Trees-- this is neither the crusty SST punk of their earliest days nor the shaggy radio rock of Uncle Anaesthesia or Sweet Oblivion. Revisionist history has occasionally cast Screaming Trees as an unremarkable, workmanlike rock band blessed with a distinct vocalist, and if Last Words does anything for their legacy, it makes that notion somewhat true for the first time.
Not much here bears the weight of creative struggle or even an idea dump, just up-the-middle guitar songs that could conceivably be the result of a five-minute writing session or a dogged determination to have something to show for a 12-hour day in the studio. Opener "Ash Grey Sunday" boasts the kind of casually anthemic guitar jangle in the lineage of the Yardbirds or "About a Girl", but it's garage rock in theory only, all simple transitions and lyrical archetype with no crackling urgency. A similar lack of development pervades "Door Into Summer" and "Tomorrow Changes", bright and agreeable strummers whose most interesting songwriting touch is a fourth chord on top of the requisite three. Any tie towards actual psychedelia in their rock has been severed as well: "Crawlspace" is the most audacious bit of studio experimentation, but it merely subjects Lanegan's vocals to the same tinny flange effect that's found its way onto too many Twilight Singers albums.
Sure, I've got the benefit of hindsight here, but these really do sound like the work of a band struggling with inspiration, more unwilling than unable to push themselves: "Revelator" finds them kicking up some Dust with a bluesy front porch jam*,* but it's a total rewrite of "Dying Days"; "Low Life" pops up later sounding like a minor variation of "Revelator", and the closing title track's basically a minor variation of "Low Life". I think we can all agree that "Dying Days" is a good song, but not that good.
Ironically, Last Words is actually rendered more inessential by its best quality. In terms of sheer tone, Lanegan once again sounds fantastic. But you already knew that. Whether we're talking about his solo albums, collaborations with Isobel Campbell and Greg Dulli, or his more high-profile work with Queens of the Stone Age, there's no shortage of him functioning as rock's equivalent of Scarface (the rapper, not Al Pacino), relied on as a character actor specializing in a certain kind of brooding, wizened masculinity. An oft-overlooked problem with this lonesome stranger guise is that while Lanegan's lyrics read straightforward on paper, there's something weirdly unknowable about them. It's tempting to read into such a leading title for insight on Screaming Trees' mindstate during the sessions that caused their dissolution, but Last Words is sort of a record about nothing much at all.
Even if the circumstances are different, I can't help but compare this to Rock ‘N' Roll Submarine, the comeback record released by a reincarnated Urge Overkill this year. Both were bands that similarly arose from a primordial, noisy 80s to the perpetual precipice of stardom thanks to a soundtrack hit, only to slowly burn out by the end of the century. And while each developed a distinct sound and subtly covered a lot of ground in their time, they're somewhat awkward to reevaluate in 2011, when few bands (if any) bear any sign of their influence. Screaming Trees lived a full artistic life and were often great beyond "Nearly Lost You", but Last Words is basically an epitaph for a band that died of natural causes.
