Screaming Trees Best Album Poll

qotsa albums would walk them

I'm a huge fan of the Change is Come ep on SubPop. It was released in between the SST and the Epic years . It's often overlooked and - as far as I can tell - out-of-print, so see if you can find it somewhere.

i have the cd :)

i couldve bought the 2x7"s a good 10 years back in missing records for £7.99 but didn't :(

bump

what's everyone's fave track on the Change Has Come ep?
Mine is Time Speaks Her Golden Tongue

Vote

I will.
It's been a while since I last heard any of these. Bought Uncle Anasthesia cheap two years ago. Used to play Sweet Oblivion all the time in the years after it came out (a time at which my album collection numbered at about a whopping 20 in total). My brother bought the SST Anthology back in the day, had a few pretty great songs iirc. Might pull out Dust tonight..

I voted for Dust, mostly because I listened to it the other day for the first time in years and it's astonishing. Just so consistent as well - there's pretty much nothing between the first seven or eight songs.

Sweet Oblivion is just as consistently brilliant too.

what's everyone's fave track on the Change Has Come ep?
Mine is Time Speaks Her Golden Tongue

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Monday, April 27, 2009 7:24 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Agreed.

Hurrah!

oh its next week this finishes.

gives everyone time to check out the albums they havent heard!

yeah, I've been doing this and have been pretty stoked. All of the SST stuff never sounded quite right together on Anthology, which I had as a kid, but now that I'm listening to EIAEW and Buzz Factory it just sounds perfect. Definitely need to hear the rest.

Surprisingly, I've never heard the Epic stuff either except for Nearly Lost You.

there's some really good songs that weren't on the SST Anthology album.
The 3 albums on Epic are awesome. They really did get better as they went on, and the last 2 were perfection IMO. They really went out on top.
Would love them to reform as Lanegan still does excellent solo stuff and Valis were pretty good (there's a new Valis album out btw)

http://www.myspace.com/valis

Band Website http://www.valisrocks.com
Band Members Van Conner - Vocals, Lead Guitar (Screaming Trees, Solomon Grundy, Musk Ox)

Patrick Conner - Lead Guitar, Vocals (Kitty Kitty, Kittitas, Musk Ox)

Adrian Makins - (Master Blaster, Musk Ox, Kitty Kitty) Bass, Vocals

Sean Hollister (King Krab, Solomon Grundy, Screaming Trees)- Drums

Wes Weresch (Ring, The Western Trio)- Trip

Former members:
Kurt Danielson - Bass (1996-2002) (TAD, Bundle of Hiss)
Dan Peters - Drums (1996-1998) (Mudhoney, Bundle of Hiss)

I forget what Gary Lee Conner is upto these days

Gary Lee Conner (born Lee Gary Conner on August 22, 1962 in Fort Irwin, California, USA) was the lead guitarist for grunge music act Screaming Trees, along with his brother Van, who was the band's bassist. In addition to his work with the Screaming Trees, Conner was featured on Ball-Hog or Tugboat, a 1995 album from Mike Watt. In 1999, he released a 7" EP on the Sub Pop entitled Grasshopper's Daydream/Behind The Smile; this album also featured Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Brother Van Conner of VALIS (band) and Former Screaming Trees Drummer Mark Pickerel. In 2004, Conner started up a new music project called Amanita Caterpillar. His other band of the past with brother Van Conner was called The Purple Outside.

Conner currently lives in San Angelo, Texas with his wife Janet and daughter Juliana. He also works as a newspaper courier.

I thought he'd be a bit old to be a paper boy ;)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I voted Sweet Oblivion. "Dollar Bill" is such a great song. They were great at that folk rock acoustic opening turning into a rock snarl down pretty well. The closer "Julie Paradise" pulls something similar, but the end is just wah-wah heaven.

I should pick up copies of those last three albums again; I sold mine in the great grunge purge in the mid 90s.

yes you should!

last hour to vote

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

whoa! Dust should be no2! Did everyone think others would vote for it?

You do know you vote for your favorite, right? This isn't "Rank'em Top To Bottom." I laugh every time I see that reaction - "My second/third/nth favorite should have done better! But I, like everyone else, voted for my absolute favorite!"

Sorry, you don't deserve that pissy response. Just think it is funny that it happens every time. Dust is a great album, but obviously not too many people's #1 pick.

I'm just glad to see that all have partisans.

It's not that at all, it's just Dust got the most mentions by people in the thread AND most fans reckon it's their best album, and critics also agree with that, so I'm surprised it wasnt first or second.

there's different schools of trees fans though, aren't there? and for those who love the Epic-era, I think SweetOblivion is their most substantial, their best album. The SST era is more scattered, so SST acolytes chose around the catalogue. To be honest, I'm amazed as many voted as did. Glady so, though.

I'm amazed that Sweet Oblivion got so many votes; it must be a zeitgeist thing because to me it's their most boring album. Yeah it's got Nearly Lost You on it, but for the life of me I can't remember any other tune (aside from Dollar Bill, which I'm not a big fan of).

i have a soft spot for dust mainly because i recall how it really seemed to fall under the radar on its release, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews. i loved it from the day i picked it up all those years ago, and even though it's perhaps a little tame and underpowered in parts, i think it really holds together well.

that said, sweet oblivion will always be my favourite. i listened to this constantly along with other seminal seattle records released around the same time, and i'll always associate it with the singular expressions of its era.

Went with Sweet Oblivion, best (singalong)songs + epic Connertronics + sweet nostalgia.

Coincidentally, the debut is today's album of the day at allmusic.

"epic Connertronics" is right! Listening to "Julie Paradise" again and at about 2:50 in: what's the name of that effect, the one that could be called a wah-wah but also sounds like it has some chorus going on? Is this a standard pedal or something the band put together? Because it sounds great, that swirling roar.

Julie Paradise is my go-to track on this disc

i has a bitchen 10 minute version from a bootleg somewhere...

Their final recordings (1998-1999) will be released in August. No reunion.

http://easystreetonline.com/blog/5268/new-screaming-trees-album-out-in-august

pretty fuckin excited to hear this.

weird. i'm surprised by the amount of enthusiasm and expertise on display itt, though i don't know why i should be. 75 responses to this poll, which must make the screaming trees something of a minor ILM favorite, though seldom discussed.

have mixed feelings about the trees cuz i was at one time something of a fan, despite lanegan reservations and the fact that they never made a record i 100% loved all the way through. i guess they suffered in my mind for being better than das damen, but 2nd to the likes of the meat puppets and dino jr, damned with not-so-faint praise. even if and especially when is my favorite (or was, haven't heard it in ages), with buzz factory a good close second, both more for certain songs than front-to-back perfection. was a sucker for the tough punk edge and spaceflower hippie lyrics on shit like "straight out to anyplace" and "the pathway":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RelQCJmssHk

this was (and still is!) my favorite tho:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLWLLrjaAzw

Even If And Especially When is such an SST title that when someone namechecks it, I usually assume that it's by Black Flag or the Minutemen.

or fIREHOSE

^

What it reminds me most of is "I won't stick any of you unless and until I can stick all of you."

Enjoying the Last Words: The Final Recordings. However, back in the 90s, I could have sworn I heard they recorded an album before Dust that was rejected by the label, and that was the "lost album." Was I confused, and it's only these later sessions?

these are the sessions from the album they intended to make after dust, but yeah, i think you're right and there was another album rejected between sweet ovlivion and dust.

would purchase the penultimate recordings, if they released it.

How did Dust poll so low?! Although to be fair I don't know much of their other work, and came to them via Dust.

bizarrely low

i love their SST output, bought Anthology as a teen from mailorder SST catalog that came with i think You're Living All Over Me. Only recently have I been trying to track down all the originals on vinyl. I think Invisible Lantern is my fav. Not such a fan of the 90s stuff, kinda like Sonic Youth 90's vs. 80's where the 90's major label stuff seems less murky/mysterious/lo-fi/intangible to me but that's probably down to my not being old enough/around when the early stuff was new.

"new" album is fuckin awesome.

sweey obliv remains my favourite, love the sst stuff, but have always been cold on uncle anaesthesia

Surprised that "Dust" polled so low.

I am super gay for Lanegan.

Price-gouging, but also it was on Barrett Martin's own label, so was a pretty limited release. It's good though.

This was cut for an aborted album between Sweet Oblivion and Dust but didn't get a release until a Trees comp on Sony that Mark and the band were involved in (following a cash-in Sony comp they weren't involved it that sucked). I think it's pretty great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkSpQPqfa44

Sucks how much of their stuff is OOP right now.

Van Conner has passed

https://www.facebook.com/garyleeconner/posts/pfbid0yibxbYgKW4zWysCMVBumDYNcMp9mg6RuwPzmEDXJJetDjzERXZDgM8YASpc4i6bnl

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/van-conner-screaming-trees-dead-dies-1235493452/

Damn, RIP.

Fuck.

fuck

A brutal year for the Trees. Rip.

This fucked me up a fair bit. I didn’t know he’d apparently been horribly ill for over a year.

Love the Trees. They could swing.

Where are Screaming Trees' tapes?

SCREAMING TREES ANCIENT LOST TAPE SEARCH

TAPES WE SEEK:

1/2" 8-Tracks/Other Worlds/Even If & Especially When/Invisible Lantern
2" 16-Tracks Buzz Factory
various multi-tracks Change Has Come
ANY OTHER SCREAMING TREES TAPES

In the mid 90s Mark Lanegan possesed the tapes.
Legend has it he put them in a storage unit.
Rent was upaid and they were lost to historv.

any information, rumors or repressed memories would be much appreciated

Help us reclaim history at
screamingtreeslegacy AT gmail dot com

Damn, that's a bummer.