Review Summary: Smokey and Dusty, Kind and Smiling.
Here's is my first review. I'm pretty bad at grammar. I like to use periods to often. Give me some ***.
My introduction to the Trees was in 1993. I was 8 years old back then and Chicago's Q101 was the station where the cool kids put up with Candlebox to get their Smashing Pumpkins fix. James Van Osdol ruled the night spot. Unlike a lot of the songs of the time, Nearly Lost You swung through the speakers with a with a groove you could actually dance too unlike Plush for example, which plodded and crooned it's way into the hearts of older teens and 30 somethings all over the nation. I was a happy child living in the burbs wearing a Charlotte Hornets Starter pullover in the winter.
The Screaming Trees Dust is meant to be listened to on late night drives at the end of October. Roads you're lousy headlights can't see down past the broken branches and wind blown leaves covering the pavement. Oozing melancholy, missed opportunities, with hopefulness peaking through it's cloudy sheath of jangling guitars and mystic, shaman like vocals. Mellotron is generously adding to the scenes of shadow play in Halo of Ashes and the albums searing single All That I Know. Look at You's lyrical content such as "Through rose colored sky/Or blue, blue moonlight and miracles on high/She's walking by", though disenchanted still carry of tinge of assurance. Dying Days is the opposite of looking through rose colored glasses, reeking of how you can never escape your past but never go back. The fourth track Make My Mind soars with its flailing Fenders and manages to swing even though it's rhythms are straight as an arrow, and like Nearly Lost You it's a song that'll make you want to Dust of your hippie gyrations. The rest of the record doesn't quite reach the heights of the first half but it's no slouch, though Witness would have been better off as a b-side. Traveler brings the mellotron out front in the mix for its ode to the inevitable passage of time. Gospel Plow, the closing track opens with tablas and the hurdy-gurdy and then finds itself at it's chorus with the only mean sounding chord progress on the album. Dust's portrait may only consist of a few colors but there's plenty of shades for hours of fun!
Font loaded with best tracks the album is an effortless 44 minute listen, there's not a stinker to be found. Dust is not a record you rock out too, you float along its smooth optimistic jams. You'll ponder you're position in the worlds chaos while being grounded in you're own misfortunes but also see the light if you look into the stratosphere.
