Screaming Trees - 'Oceans Of Confusion' (Epic/Legacy) Released 23/05/05

The grunge explosion of the early nineties was perhaps the biggest musical phenomenon since Punk. Nothing had conquered the world with so much ease for quite some time - some claim the music world up until then had been quite a dull place. Like punk to progressive rock, grunge swept away the cobwebs and energised the scene again, labels were bidding extortionate amounts of money hoping to sign the next big thing from Seattle. During that glorious period there were several era-defining albums from Soundgarden’s ‘Super unknown’, to Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’, to Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’… But if you were in the know there was another album to add to the list; Screaming Trees' ‘Sweet Oblivion’. Like many of the great records from this age it was released without being noticed, without the hype and without the sort of career crushing pressure bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

The group had been around for a lot longer than most of their peers group but it was when they signed to Epic records that they started to focus, moulding their loves for 60’s rock, confessional folk and psychedelic into something more gutsy, more bluesy and when compared to their earlier material, a whole lot better. So with the renewed interest in Mark Lanegan (the bands lead singer) since he joined Queens Of The Stone Age, this seems a perfect opportunity to release an Epic records era collection. And it’s amazing to hear how powerful the songs still are, even after all these years. But as great as this collection is, and it’s two previously unreleased tracks do show how consistently great a band they were after ‘Sweet Oblivion’, tracks from their previous album ‘Uncle Anesthesia’ seem weak in comparison, and though this may be a great introduction to a great band, perhaps it’d be smarter just to buy their two best albums, ‘Sweet Oblivion’ and ‘Dust’. In the meantime, don’t mind us while we lose ourselves to ‘Dying Days’, ‘Julie Paradise’, ‘Dollar Bill’, ‘Nearly Lost You’... Ahhh.