By: Si Forster
Gary Lee Conner | facebook | bandcamp |
Released on February 7, 2016 via Bandcamp
“Have you seen this?”
This is one of the better ways to discover new things, a message received upon getting home after a bad day pointing you in the direction of something that would have otherwise passed by quietly. The “this” in question was a Youtube video featuring a Screaming Trees song, performed by their guitarist Gary Lee Conner. A small amount of delving later, and it turns out that there’s a whole album of this. And it’s a bit weird.
The Screaming Trees’ recorded history is a bit strange at the best of times, as they seemed to spend more time away from their band making records than they did on their dayjob. They also carved a career from being in the right place at precisely the wrong time, making records that were either way before or indeed way after their time, as well as scrapping completed projects. On the strength of bad timing alone, they must surely qualify as being among the most “nearly, but not quite” bands on the planet.
Recorded in the band’s old rehearsal space in the back of Ellensberg’s New World Video (a store owned by the parents of the Trees’ Conner brothers), this is as stripped-down a performance as one could possibly be as Lee performs with just an acoustic guitar, captured by a video camera. This is very rough & ready, and at times disconcertingly so, but there’s a nostalgic charm at work here as the listener occasionally struggles to work out what’s going on.
Frontloaded with largely unheard GLC songs (opener ‘Grasshopper’s Daydream’ was a Sup Pop Singles Club 7” from 1999), what will be of most interest to fans will be the six Screaming Trees songs presented here, a couple from further back in their career but the majority would have been new compositions that only recently officially surfaced as part of the Last Words posthumous demos LP.
Vocally, it’s all OK stuff – although he’s no Mark Lanegan, Gary Lee puts in a decent shift. He does have a tendency here to drown himself out with his own guitar which is this collection’s biggest drawback. When he gets the better of his own bright chords though, as he gamely does to great effect during ‘Love Light’ (the low register of this one certainly sounding as though this was written with Mark in mind rather than as one of his own side projects), it’s quite a joy to listen to. It does have to be said though that it is mostly guitar, making ‘Wake For a New World’ come across as something typically Screaming Trees-ish: an interesting document that could have been so much more essential if someone had thought to put a microphone in the room nearer the singer.
For the fan though, this is a mere distraction. Of the Trees songs represented, a couple reach back into the band’s formative past (‘Transfiguration’ and the wonderful ‘Cold Rain’ on their feet-finding Even if and Especially When LP), with the bulk comprising what would have been very new compositions at the time that appeared on their semi-legendary 1998/99 demos and can now be heard in full on their Last Words album. Of these, ‘Black Rose Way’ lends itself especially well to the stripped-down treatment as does ‘Last Words’, retaining its Small Faces pomp surprisingly well. Of the previously unheard stuff, a genuine “if only…” moment comes in the form of ‘Love Light’, a great song that slipped through the net at the time and at a stroke justifies this entire release.
It’s a tricky thing to recommend, as the sound quality is frustrating especially when Gary Lee’s voice is at its softest and his guitar hitting is at its hardest. But Screaming Trees fans will find a lot to like and love here, looking back fondly at times and wishing for fuller renditions at others. It’s cheap though (and he’s also put the whole performance on YouTube for the truly miserly among you) and the charming chaos of the recording makes me remember why I started listening to this sort of thing in the first place.
