10 Obscure Grunge Albums You Need To Listen To
8. Screaming Trees - Sweet Oblivion
Despite their impressive back catalogue, Screaming Trees may remain best known for giving vocalist Mark Lanegan and occasional touring guitarist and later Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme their starts.
Given the quality of much of their music, that’s borderline criminal, and while Screaming Trees certainly have their devoted fans, in the wider world they remain underrated. Their finest work is 1992’s Sweet Oblivion, an album that steps away from their earlier, harder work into something with great emotional heft which better utilises Lanegan’s amazing voice.
“For Celebrations Past” is a great example of his range, in terms of both texture and pitch. He moves from a seductive growl to a desperate yelp on the chorus. Meanwhile the rest of the band provide some of the best sounding rock of the decade. “More Or Less” isn’t an aggressive track but it’s an amazingly heavy one, every instrument adding to the mounting drama.
This album also contains the hit “Nearly Lost You”, which is a bonafide ‘90s alt rock radio classic. There are plenty of tracks that could be described as such, but precious few as good as this one.