Screaming Trees
Uncle Anesthesia

I hear a beautiful song and ask him who is singing. With his usual face, he answers in his standard metallic tone, resignedly saying: "It’s Mark Lanegan." Then a flash of life, he awakens from his lofty and disconnected thoughts and tells me decisively: "I don't think you know him, he was the singer of Screaming Trees." *

"Uncle Anesthesia", from 1991, is the first album by Screaming Trees released with a major label, Epic, following "Buzz Factory" (for which I refer to the great review by Donjunio already present on these pages). The album was produced not only by Screaming Trees themselves but also by Chris Cornell, who provided backing vocals on three tracks (the eponymous "Uncle Anesthesia", "Before We Arise", and "Alice Said").

The record is decidedly more rock than grunge, and perhaps thanks to the production, it shows a certain professional attitude, let’s say you can smell the recording studio rather than the dust of a garage or the musty closeness of a basement. Guitars and drums are prominent, the sound is dense, full-bodied, compact, and homogeneous, strong but clean, without edges or smudges. The level is high, and it remains so for all thirteen tracks that compose it. Making a bold wine comparison, it’s almost an "assembly" album, or a glass of Cirò.

When I talk about homogeneity, I mean to highlight precisely the high content of the whole work, which does not show drops or relaxations, and offers a certain compositional and executional linearity and continuity, but this does not mean that the album is flat, boring, or monotonous. On the contrary, you’ll find psychedelic brushstrokes, catchy tracks, more restrained pieces, dark atmospheres, and sunnier and more melodic songs; all of which are excellently dominated by Lanegan’s perfect voice.

Paradoxically, precisely the album's merit then presents the flip side, becoming also its main defect, and perhaps one of the reasons it didn’t achieve the success it deserved, aside from the overshadowing caused by the deflagration of Nirvana's contemporary "Nevermind". I am referring specifically to the album's uniformity: while the standard of all the pieces is commendable, there is a lack of standout songs, those one or two tracks that rise above the otherwise high average of the others, that have that special touch which distinguishes them and engraves them in your memory and that, perhaps, would have decreed greater success, even commercially, for the album and the band (I do have my favorites: the ballad "Bed of Roses", the energetic rock of "Story Of Her Fate", the dark "Alice Said", the closing track "Closer").

A final note that enhances my pleasure for this album regards the spectacular cover: it might be my degenerate freak state, but that monster waving with one of its four hands like a Vulcan makes me smile every time... live long and prosper.

Now I understand, my ordinary appearance transmits deplorable listens to him. But I know who Mark Lanegan is, arrogant shopkeeper unworthy of the stuff you sell here, you alternative of my balls, when I was listening to the Dead Kennedys you hadn’t even started masturbating. I leave, I leave and I hate him. *

* from "Tono Metallico Standard", track no. 5 of "Socialismo Tascabile - Prove Tecniche di Trasmissione", Offlaga Disco Pax, 2005.