The history of the Screaming Trees goes back to 1985 when brothers Van Conner on bass and Gary Lee Conner on guitar teamed up singer Mark Lanegan in rural logging town Ellensburg, Washington State in 1985. After recording a handful of EPs and LPs for various US indie labels, including SST and Sub Pop, they signed to Sony imprint Epic Records for 1991’s “Uncle Anaesthesia”, co-produced with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell.



Geographically close enough to Seattle to benefit from the grunge scene that was about to explode with Nirvana in 1991, by the time they came to record “Sweet Oblivion” in 1992, they had been joined by Barrett Martin on drums (REM, Mad Season, Queens Of The Stoneage & Walking Papers). Whilst retaining the psychedelic elements that characterised much of their early output, their second major label album certainly leaned further towards a more commercial, hard rock sound.



Probably the band’s most successful record, this was no doubt helped by the inclusion of lead single ‘Nearly Lost You’ on the 2,000,000 selling soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s grunge-era movie, “Singles”, thrusting the band into the limelight with the attention brought by the film, and an MTV-friendly video.



Produced Don Fleming, the album was mixed by Andy Wallace, who had brought a commercial sheen to the previous year’s “Nevermind” by Nirvana. ‘Nearly Lost You’ was followed by the release of the more introspective ‘Dollar Bill’ as a single, with ‘Shadow Of the Season’ and ‘Butterfly’ also released as singles in certain international territories.



This edition now features a number of non-album bonus tracks. ‘Maybe (Van’s New One)’ was sung by bassist Van Conner, whilst ‘E.S........
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