Although currently on hiatus, everyone should try to see a Screaming Trees live show at least once before they die. Few bands before or since command the stage like the trees.
Flanked by the huge Conner brothers (Gary Lee on guitar and Van on bass, both looking like football linemen), lead singer Mark Lanegan's would cling to the microphone, pouring out his soulful, syrupy baritone vocals. Although often lumped in with the Seattle grunge movement of the early '90s, the Trees actually preceeded that, and never really felt as if they were part of it.
The group, which formed in the mid 1980s, felt far more kinship to the heavy psychedelic sounds of classic rock groups like Vanilla Fudge or Blue Cheer. Indeed, where most of their grunge peers would tend to turn up the amps and then rock out with a sense of ironic detachment from the stage, no one who's ever seen Gary Lee Conner live would associate him with that image. Seeing the 6-foot plus, 300-pound guitarist leaping about on stage, windmilling and scissor-kicking like Pete Townshend on a triple espresso, the Screaming Trees always gave off a sense of greater immediacy than most of their peers in concert, despite the obvious classic rock influences in their sound.
At the center of it all and seeming to hold things together for the group was the always present Mark Lanegan. Although not prone to the live antics of his bandmates, the sheer intensity of Lanegan's growling, Jim Morrison-meets-Burton Cummings vocals make the Screaming Trees one of the great live bands of the last 25 years.
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Charli XCX
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