Screaming Trees
Screaming Trees came out of Ellensburg, a small college town two hours east across the mountains, not Seattle itself. They gave the scene one of its most unmistakable voices: Mark Lanegan.
- Formed
- Ellensburg, Washington, 1985
- Members
- Mark Lanegan (vocals, d. 2022), Gary Lee Conner (guitar), Van Conner (bass), Barrett Martin (drums); early drummer Mark Pickerel
- Key albums
- Sweet Oblivion (1992), Dust (1996)
- Status
- Disbanded 2000
Screaming Trees formed in 1985 in Ellensburg (a small, dry college town on the other side of the Cascades from Seattle), a detail that undercuts the idea that grunge was purely a Seattle-city phenomenon. The band was built around brothers Gary Lee and Van Conner and singer Mark Lanegan, whose deep, weathered baritone was as far from a typical rock-frontman voice as the scene produced.
Their commercial peak came with 1992's Sweet Oblivion, whose single "Nearly Lost You" was included on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 1992 film Singles, a movie set in and around the Seattle scene that also featured members of Pearl Jam and other local musicians. The exposure gave the Trees their biggest audience, though they remained, in commercial terms, a tier below Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.
The band broke up in 2000 after a long, difficult stretch trying to record a planned follow-up to 1996's Dust that was ultimately shelved. Mark Lanegan went on to a long and prolific solo career and numerous collaborations (including with Queens of the Stone Age and UNKLE) until his death in February 2022.
#grunge.