Ocean of Confusion: Songs of Screaming Trees 1989-1996

Artist	Screaming Trees
Format	CD
Genre	Rock
Label Name	Epic/Legacy
Producer	Chris Cornell, Terry Date, George Drakoulias, Don Fleming
Release Date	2005 05 24
Song List	1: Who Lies in Darkness (4:14) 2: Alice Said (4:11) 3: Disappearing (3:11) 4: Ocean of Confusion (3:05) 5: Shadows of the Season (4:34) 6: Nearly Lost You (4:07) 7: Dollar Bill (4:34) 8: More or Less (3:10) 9: For Celebrations Past (4:09) 10: Julie Paradise (5:01) 11: Butterfly (3:22) 12: E.S.K. (4:10) 13: Watchpocket Blues [#] (5:14) 14: Paperback Bible [#] (3:07) 15: Make My Mind (4:12) 16: Dying Days (4:51) 17: Sworn and Broken (3:34) 18: Witness (3:39) 19: Traveler (5:22)
Style.Categories	American Underground, College Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Grunge, Alternative Pop/Rock, Hard Rock

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Of all the Seattle-based alternative rock bands of the late '80s and early '90s, Screaming Trees arguably were the best at capturing the dank, heavy gloom of their hometown -- the mix of punk and '70s hard rock that became known as grunge -- but they had the least amount of success of any of their peers. Nirvana changed the world, Pearl Jam conquered stadiums across America, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains reshaped heavy metal, while Mudhoney carved out a cult for their knowingly sleazy update on '60s garage punk and the Stooges. Screaming Trees had a cult, not just among fans but musicians -- Kurt Cobain was particularly taken with the band's vocalist, Mark Lanegan, whose American gothic spin on folk can be clearly heard as an influence on Nirvana's spookier work -- but they never managed to break to a larger audience, even when they had a radio and MTV hit in 1992 with the surging "Nearly Lost You," pulled from the Singles soundtrack. Part of the problem was that Screaming Trees not only didn't look like rock stars -- as the cliché goes, brothers Gary Lee and Van Conner looked like lumberjacks, while Lanegan struck an intimidating presence -- but they looked large, hairy, and scary and made thick psychedelic music that matched. Those trippy, minor-key undercurrents and Lanegan's worn, ragged croon lent the group's music an uneasiness, and while the band's musical touchstones weren't all that far removed from Nirvana or Soundgarden, the predilection for psychedelia and Lanegan's haunted tales guaranteed that Screaming Trees would be on the outside looking in, even if their records captured the roiling spirit of their times as much as their Seattle brethren. In fact, they were one of the best examples of the Catch-22 that faced most '90s alt-rock bands: since their music was built partially on classic rock it seemed accessible on the surface, but the attitude and spirit that fueled their work kept them aligned to the fringes of rock, so they never fully belonged to either the mainstream or underground camp. They forever were straddling between the two worlds, which may have hurt them commercially, but it made for some excellent music, as Epic/Legacy's 2005 compilation Ocean of Confusion: Songs of Screaming Trees proves.
This 19-song collection covers the group's '90s recordings for Epic, which consisted of three albums -- 1991's Uncle Anesthesia, 1992's Sweet Oblivion, 1996's Dust -- plus some stray B-sides and an EP. The band's recordings for SST have been previously compiled on the 1991 release Anthology: SST Years 1985-1989, and they're not missed here, because their Epic albums were more unified, forceful, and realized than their indie work. Starting with Uncle Anesthesia, Screaming Trees began to gel, as the band's sound gained a muscular inevitability while Lanegan's writing achieved a grand, darkly romantic, doomed quality. Sweet Oblivion was an appealingly bombastic record, while Dust had a cinematic splendor, closing their career out on a fittingly melancholy coda. Each of the three albums worked well individually -- with the latter two vying for the title of the group's best record -- but when distilled to their highlights on Ocean of Confusion, they give the band a compelling narrative that makes this an excellent summary of the band's career.