The Dusty Shelf: Screaming Trees - Dust

[The Dusty Shelf is a weekly column that showcases a tragically overlooked album from the music snob's library.]

For a subgenre that has garnered so much fame as to claim a decade, grunge rock sure doesn’t conjure very many names.  Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots…um…those other guys.  But while those big names carried the genre for the most part, they certainly weren’t the only grunge bands to emerge from the aftermath of Nevermind - certainly not the only from Seattle, either.

Screaming Trees were a grunge band that probably fell closer into the Pearl Jam faction than the Nirvana one - less interested in quirky college rock like the Pixies and Meat Puppets than in big-time rockers like The Who and Led Zeppelin.  But Screaming Trees added a unique element of otherworldliness - Middle Eastern scales, Beatlesque string sections and even synthesizers would pop up in their songs like uninvited guests who end up being more party-friendly than you thought they would.

The reason Screaming Trees never really took off in a very grunge-friendly market probably had to do with many factors, including the band’s abrasive, alcoholic-friendly social activities and habitual spans of time where the band would go on music-less hiatuses.  When they would finally churn out an album, it was always solid, sometimes even comparable to the grunge greats.  One of those such albums happened to be their last - 1996’s Dust.

Despite carrying with it a very grungy album title (with only its immediate predecessor, Sweet Oblivion, taking the cake for most obvious grunge name), the music does not at all sound dated.  Opener “Halo of Ashes” (again, talk about a generic alt-rock vocabulary) fuses your classic heavy blues riffs with sweeping strings and dancing sitars, while “Dime Western“ loops the same sexy riff over some stampeding drums, creating an almost house-grunge effect.  Meanwhile, singer Mark Lanegan drives the ship with a delivery that recalls a gruffer Layne Staley (Alice in Chains).  In fact, the music’s unpredictability probably has more in common with AiC than the other grunge heavy hitters.

In contrast with Dirt,  Alice in Chains’ 1992 classic, Dust alternates grit and grime for hazy mysticism, probably due to their propensity for, shall I say, dusting off classic rock cornerstones like Physical Graffiti and Disraeli Gears.  It isn’t an entirely new concept anymore, but Screaming Trees make it fit better than most of the bands of that time.

Dust isn’t a groundbreaking album like some of the other Dusty Shelf entries I’ve done in the past (after all, in those days, any grunge album that built a steady stream of momentum usually skyrocketed to the top of the charts), but it fits perfectly with the tradition of this column as an overlooked, overshadowed entity.  Screaming Trees were around before Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Soundgarden, so one could argue their longevity alone should earn them respect. But it’s their music they should, and could, ultimately be remembered for.