6. “Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.”
Revisit old favorites from your college or early adult years.
Mark Lanegan - Whiskey for the Holy Ghost
In June of 92, Singles was released in theaters. The soundtrack was one of those musical touchstones. It really was a nice snapshot of the Seattle scene.
On that album was a track from an album released in March of that year. “Nearly Lost You” was my introduction to the Screaming Trees. A relatively unknown band at the time. The song became a minor hit and gave the band their fifteen minutes of fame.
They were a very strange band. As much as I dislike the use of grunge as a genre because it is meaningless, I think Sweet Oblivion is the perfect grunge album. It encapsulates the effect of Nirvana and Pearl Jam hitting it huge and defining a scene very well. If there was a grunge sound, the Trees captured it very well in their moment in the spotlight.
It was an oddity in a catalog that I very much became obsessed with (I still own an entire discography of the band on cd). Their first EP is crazy psychedelic surf music. They border on punk for a moment before crossing back to modern psychedlia. Their album after Sweet Oblivion, Dust, their last release, is a maniacal gothic western.
The singer Mark Lanegan couldn’t be contained by the band. In 1990, he released his first solo album. This, his second solo album, came in 94. This was the moment he stepped beyond being arguably the best male vocalist of his generation but added storytelling chops that are reserved for folks like Cohen. He makes you feel every last aspect of a song. The accompaniment here can be lush or sparse but his voice is completely the center of attention at all times.
He was a hell of a talent who deserved to be a bigger deal than he was and whom I still miss everyday, just like Bowie, Prince, and Cash.
