SCREAMING TREES - The Velvetone year

1986 is the "year" in question; all of their output on that label, such as it was, was from 1986. 

By the time I got to listening to the Trees' first couple of releases, I'd recalibrated my expectations from viewing them as key steps in the evolution of Mr. M. Lanegan's songwriting to knowing that by his report, he had no creative hand in them beyond being the guy who sings.  It was still interesting to first listen to Other Worlds and realize that, at least at his point in their life, Screaming Trees are not about the vocal performance.  Like, at all.  Anyone could be the singer on a song like "Like I Said," and it really wouldn't matter very much.  At this point Lee presumably didn't know the kind of tool he had in his singer when he put these tracks together.  Honestly, even after he figured it out, knowing that the guy in question was constantly threatening to quit, it still might have still made sense to keep his songs from getting too vocals-forward, come to think of it... that'll be interesting to track over this project.

So if the vocals don't make the songs work, what does?  Most of the time it's the little hooks and the interplay between guitar and bass.  I have to agree with Sing Backwards' assessment that at this young age, Lee just had an ear for a hook.  Most songs have a cool chord that either he or his brother can lean into, with the other finding a way to complement it.  "Like I Said" and "Barriers" are great showcases for that brotherly kind of telepathy that the better songs feature, wherein Van's bass will dance around the guitar when it leans into one main note, or the other way around.  Most of these tracks have an appealing basic sound - a chugging energy in the stringed instruments, a cool chord that can be repeated, and that's that.  The keyboard parts (from Lee, I'd assume, given that he's credited with "electric organ" on later Trees releases) tend to be used nicely for emphasis and augment the psychedelic feel that these tunes dabble in, but for all the talk about how '60s indebted the music is, I hear as much '80s indie-rock jangle as I do punk or psychadelia influences.  They're absolutely on the same general spectrum of what the likes of R.E.M. were doing at a much higher profile.  Even if the combo of punk and psychedelic rock gave us the "genre" of grunge,* don't forget the contribution of basic garage rock n' roll.  Most songs only have one real interesting musical idea, which is fine for Other Worlds, because none of the tracks overstays its welcome.

As far as how to adapt his voice to these songs, Lanegan tries a few approaches.  Sometimes he's just kinda there, mumbling in the background.  His delivery on "Pictures In My Mind" and "The Turning" is a little more chatty but still laid back.  He rarely gets particularly intense, which doesn't play to his strengths.  He's deft at handling the songs like the title track that have a lot of words/syllables coming within a short period of time.  I think that he sounds most in his element on both "Barriers" and "Now Your Mind Is Next To Mine," especially the muscially more interesting former of the two, where the vocals drift in out of the morass and build along the way as the song does.  In these moments, the Trees dabble with really rocking out, rather than just kinda vibing with you.

As a first statement that cost like $5 to make for an audience of the band and their friend circle, Other Worlds is solid.  There's potential there and a band that has a sound.  If the intention was to convey the raw energy of their live shows, though, I don't think it does that at all.  Thing is, listening to bootlegs from that era doesn't really convey the chaos described in the book either; maybe it was all visual.

By the time we get to Clairvoyance, which gives "The Turning" a much better sounding rerecording but otherwise consists of a bunch of new songs, the band's aspirations were more than writing two minute songs with one good hook.  This is a record that my streaming service tells me was inspired by bands like the Standells and the Electric Prunes, who, uh, I've never even heard of.  Lanegan in his book shows his usual restraint in calling it "perhaps even shittier" than their first EP.  If good music to you is punk-rock and you maybe develop a taste for vintage blues along the way, yeah, I can see that.  Again, the Trees' songs are not really being written around Lanegan's tastes, though.  The Connors have a different band in mind, one that's a twisted indie spin on a wing of the music from the '60s. 

Is it any good?  Eh... it has its moments, but also some that are equally painful.  Including the horrible misfire of an opener, "Orange Airplane."  Ye gods, that intro, that incredibly annoying child voce, the cringeworthy lyrics, all over a riff that sounds cool for about fifteen seconds and beyond tedious by the end of the song's three minutes.  I hate it!  I do think the intent here is to try to imbue some raucous punk energy into their psychedelic base sound; a bad acid trip in place of a good time.  I guess what I'll say is that there's a skill to making music that sounds ugly without actually being unpleasant to listen to, and the Clairvoyance-era Trees don't really have that skill.  "Orange Airplane" isn't a song by Meat Puppets or whoever, where one could maybe make a serious case that the abrasiveness is an effective tool in building something clever.  OA is simply a bad song that's not fun to listen to.  

To be fair, the Trees are a little more successful  at that strategy on a few other tracks, like "You Tell Me All These Things" and, apart from the shitty intro/outro part, the title track.  The dizzy keyboard riff of YTMATT is getting undercut by Pix's intensity, the off-key guitar hits, the restless vocals, and at times seems like it's about to run out of steam.  Something's a little off kilter at this party.  "Clairvoyance," the song, has the vocals join in with the guitars in straining for something just out of reach, and that part of the song works well.  "Lonely Girl" takes a related but different tack, casting itself as a straight ahead rocker, again putting Pix front and center, that feels (deliberately) like notes are frequently out of place.

The thing is, though, Clairvoyance doesn't stick with that.  Rather than the punchy quick-hitting songs that have been the band's bread and butter up to this point, a lot of the running time is taken up by slower rambling numbers like "Standing On The Edge" and "Strange Out Here."  Largely languid tunes in which Lanegan often tries to do a Jim Morrison thing that he can't really sell.  "Strange Out Here" is especially aggravating because I can absolutely hear the bones of what could have been a cool song, absolutely let down by being alternately boring and absolutely embarrassing, with the Morrison imitation falling squarely in the latter category.  Now, based on my cursory knowledge - I'm admittedly getting a little out of my realm of shit I can even pretend to know shit about - to the extent that the Doors worked,** it was because they paired an even mix of conventional and experimental songwriting with a magnetic frontman who commanded attention.  Lanegan isn't magnetic on these tracks.  Perhaps in part because he barely sounds like he can pretend to be interested in singing things like "wait for the world to turn around/ then I won't go up or down" - name me one lyric on any song with the possible exception of "Lonely Girl" that doesn't sound worse the instance you actually think about it.  I think that's actually part of why I've never quite come around to becoming a Lanegan fan in the past, and it's the same reason I don't generally dig stoner rock/metal - the lazy-feeling, detached vocals are hard to engage with.  So often, in my experience, Lanegan steadfastly refuses to actually use his deep, resonant bluesy voice to actually lean into a song.  I always want him to be more of a straight-ahead rock singer than he wants to be, I guess. 

The above is another thing to keep an eye on as this project evolves.  But here again, that's almost a side point, because these songs really are not about the vocalist.  From a vocal melody and generally catchiness standpoint, the best song on the record, to me, is "Seeing And Believing."  That one can basically be described as unabashed Beatles worship, with little in the way of punk energy or attempt to be modern at all, and with Lanegan delivering an undistinguished vocal performance.  While his best work as a singer, really showing the resonance in his voice, comes on "I See Stars," where he can only do so much to make a decent song into a good one.***

These records are certainly an interesting window to seeing how one of the objectively greatest vocalists of his era got his start, before he'd really figured out who he was as a singer.  But for someone not doing a Lanegan deep dive, and not doing a project on the origins of grunge or something, can I, in good conscience, recommend Clairvoyance as a record?  Nah.

Other Worlds

Favorite track:  "Barriers"

Runner up:  "Other Worlds"

Least favorite track:  "Now Your Mind Is Next To Mine"

Rating:  2.5/5

Clairvoyance

Favorite track:  "Seeing And Believing"

Runner up:  "Lonely Girl"

Least favorite track:  "Orange Airplane"

Rating:  2/5

On to a quick (ha ha) look at Screaming Trees: The SST Years, whenever I get around to it!

*In scare quotes, because I do agree with the general conventional wisdom that grunge is (or was) more a scene than a true subgenre

**At the time of this writing, my understanding is that we're on the tail end of a period of the zeitgeist more and more loudly wondering whether the Doors were Bad, Actually.  As of the recording of Clairvoyance, I believe that the Doors' star was on the re-ascent, and that they would be considered among the unimpeachable greats for the decade or two that followed.  These things are cyclic.  Personally, I like them reasonably well but have to be in the mood for a certain amount of pretension.

***Even his fillers sound more... him.  He's more a "whoa-oh" guy like on "I See Stars" than an "aw, yeah" guy like on S&B.