Screaming Trees

Despite lyrics beholden to Mark Lanegan's attention-grabbing baritone, a big spooky aspiring commodity fetish that puts quantity before quality in the feeling department, these Northwest veterans have started roiling and hooking and knocking 'em dead at the very moment they seemed ready to expire of corporate torpor--not Kurt & Co., but definitely good for a fix. It isn't just songs, which are in evidence on their SST best-of and discernible on their Epic product, and before you credit the production, which must help some, ask yourself why Don Fleming can't do the same for Gumball. My theory: they got a new drummer, just like Kurt & Co. Hey, you never know.