Album Review - Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands - Snake in the Radio
John Metzger
In the late '80s and early '90s, grunge and alt-country simultaneously
came of age, and although the music of each movement superficially was
quite different, the two styles shared a similar sense of disaffected
angst. As the original drummer for Screaming Trees, Mark Pickerel was at
the heart of the Seattle scene when Nirvana burst into the limelight --
for a brief time during the late '80s, he backed Krist Novoselic and
Kurt Cobain -- and by all accounts, Screaming Trees should have held an
equal hand in its bid for stardom. Van and Gary Lee Conner's inability
to cooperate, however, caused such tension and turmoil within the band
that it had trouble getting off the ground. In the meantime, Pickerel
left to pursue an eclectic array of his own interests. Over the course
of the past 15 years, he unassumingly has amassed a solid body of work
by performing with the post-grunge collective Truly, supporting the
likes of Neko Case and Brandi Carlile, and most importantly, fronting
The Dark Fantastic, an outfit that increasingly appears to be the
linchpin that holds together the disparate strands of his solo career.
With the release of his latest effort Snake in the Radio -- the first to
be issued under his own name -- Pickerel further scales back the
production flourishes, leaving behind The Dark Fantastic's
psychedelicized meshing of Pink Floyd, Buffalo Springfield, and Echo and
the Bunnymen. In doing so, he reveals another act that not only has
weighed quite heavily upon his post-Screaming Trees output, but also has
helped to blaze the original alt-country trail: the seminal, roots-rock
band The Knitters.
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