It's been weird the last couple of months, driving around the plywood-lined canyons of Hollywood-- the endless construction zone, the castles of scaffolding and the drywall façades that mark the parking garages, the Scientology test centers, the mini-malls of tomorrow. Between rows of handbills for 8 Mile and Christina Aguilera's Stripped there are stark grids of them, white on black, with a single word: NIRVANA. And for a moment, it's as if nothing has changed in the ten years I've lived in Los Angeles. The payphones are still plastered with flyers beckoning models and movie extras, and you can still get a pretty decent slice of pie for six bucks. I'm still secretly infatuated with the oversized billboards that hawk made-for-cable movies down on the Sunset Strip, and I still think In 'n' Out Burgers are overrated. But somehow it's comforting to see the handbills-- ghostly, surreal tombstones, reverent in their simplicity.
Had Kurt Cobain not shot himself in the face in April 1994, it's hard to say how different the world might be. The commercial explosion of alternative rock began with the four-chord blitzkrieg of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", decimating the glass ceiling that had taunted major-label hopefuls like R.E.M., The Flaming Lips, and The Pixies in the 80s. The majors responded by hiring battalions of silver-tongued A&R; reps to find a successor for the band, bloating their rosters with gimmicky wannabes and booking Butch Vig, Jack Endino, Steve Albini, Scott Litt and Brad Wood solid through 1998. While the feeding frenzy brought deserved attention to idiosyncratic bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam, it ended with the "alternative" tag being co-opted by any and every new band, and soon the uniformly aggressive sounds of Bush, Live, and Silverchair ruled the airwaves. Kurt Cobain did not live to see this.
Nor did Cobain live to see the music-biz megamergers of the late 90s, which found a liquor empire acquiring venerable Hollywood labels like A&M;, Geffen, and DGC (Nirvana's label) and booting literally hundreds of bands-- including Cobain's beloved Raincoats and Meat Puppets-- from the majors. Surely Cobain would have reacted with abject disgust to the brazen payola which successfully poised Limp Bizkit as the new alt-rock prototype, or with disappointment as the old-school punk stylings of Green Day and The Offspring gave birth to the eerily homogenous, overcompressed frat-rock that currently dominates your friendly neighborhood Clear Channel or Infinity affiliate.
Likewise, Pitchfork was not around in 1991 to guardedly praise the slick, but undeniably classic Nevermind, to shake our heads in bafflement at the curiosity shop of Incesticide, or to hold lighters aloft at the majestic bombast of In Utero. Had Kurt Cobain lived to mark the ten-year anniversary of his biggest success in September 2001, he would have gotten his Leonard Cohen afterworld, and if it wasn't his weekend to keep Frances Bean he probably would have written a song about it. Perhaps he'd have recognized the budding songwriting chops of bandmate Dave Grohl and begun a songwriting collaboration/competition worthy of Lennon and McCartney, or taken a couple of years off before emerging with a brilliant, basement-recorded solo album (and a beard).
Instead, I find myself in the curious position of eulogizing Nirvana based on this fourteen-track best-of collection whose very existence is the result of a legal settlement. Exciting, huh? I think we can all agree that Sid & Nancy would've been a much more compelling story if, rather than Nancy Spungen dying in a Chelsea Hotel bathroom, she had survived Sid Vicious, kicked her habit, taken acting lessons, hired a phalanx of attorneys to force evil journalists and record companies to cease and desist their dastardly anti-Nancy conspiracies, and published Sid's private diaries for a $2 million payday. Long story short, Grohl and Krist Novoselic spent a year compiling an exhaustive box set with heaps of previously unreleased material, demo and rehearsal recordings, live gems, and the like; Courtney Love insisted on releasing this more conventional best-of first.
On the one hand, this radio-friendly unit shifter is indeed an artful selection of the band's most seminal material-- four cuts each from Nevermind and In Utero, two from Incesticide and Unplugged in New York, and one from Bleach. Then, of course, there's the bait: the haunting, previously unreleased "You Know You're Right", recorded during Nirvana's last-ever studio session, and laced with tantalizingly literal expressions of the physical and mental pain that dominated the last months of Cobain's life.
On the other hand, the very existence of Nirvana is a cynical assessment of the current retail climate-- a party mix for parents who want to appreciate Cobain's Lennon-esque knack for great melodies without having to click past "Scentless Apprentice" or "Territorial Pissings". With the possible exception of "Rape Me", Nirvana is utterly inoffensive: an impulse buy from Columbia House, perhaps, with no more artistic value than The Eagles' Greatest Hits or the Beatles' 1. If the kids want a righteous Nirvana mix, they'll burn one-- let the yuppies pad Frances Bean's college fund with their filthy dotcom lucre.
Nirvana lies all of its cards on the table immediately with the familiar chugging rhythms of "You Know You're Right", Novoselic's bass menacing as Cobain rakes the strings above the bridge of his beloved Mustang for a dissonant, Thurston Moore-on-Zoloft effect. The song itself is something of a sketch: Kurt reportedly rewrote several lyrics just before the recording session and intentionally slurs where the words aren't quite there (er, "Let's talk about someone else/ Steaming soup begins to melt"?). "You Know You're Right" predictably hits all the familiar Nirvana marks, and pointed lines like, "I will move away from here," and, "Nothing really bothers her/ She just wants to love herself," seem aimed directly at Love, hinting that ragged dissections of marital discord might have dominated Nirvana's fourth album.
This is one of the most beguiling mysteries of Nirvana: how a thrift store-sweater-wearing kid from trailer-park Aberdeen went from the carefree jangle of "About a Girl" to the stormy malevolence of "All Apologies" (which pointedly rhymes "married" with "buried"; Cobain would be both shortly after writing it). "About a Girl" feigns nonchalance, but there are omens beneath the surface that would haunt much of Cobain's short life-- the intrinsically unhealthy relationship that festers more out of apathy and convenience than genuine affection. "I'll take advantage while you hang me out to dry," Cobain sings with matter-of-factness.
In his liner notes for Nirvana, David Fricke notes that Cobain wrote "About a Girl" after an extended session listening to Meet the Beatles, and while the connection is not immediately apparent, the song does serve as a blueprint for some of Cobain's most tuneful later compositions. Built around a mostly two-chord groove, the song veers in unexpected directions for the power choruses, made all the more effective by Cobain's unique guitar tuning. It's curious, based on the clean guitars and tinny cymbals that dominate here, how Nirvana ever came to be identified with grunge, the genuinely dirty and moody sound more readily associated with contemporaries Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Tad than the punk-metal hybrid Nirvana favored.
This is followed by Incesticide's two most accessible cuts. "Been a Son", from 1989's Blew EP, sounds like a test run for Nevermind, all rigid harmonies and tight, churning guitar (interestingly, the version here restores 30 seconds of music inexplicably cut from the Incesticide mix, including Novoselic's bass solo). "Sliver", one of the few Nirvana songs to directly address biographical details from Cobain's childhood, turns a simple visit to grandma's into a traumatic episode of parental abandonment, confusion, and fear.
Next up are the quartet of selections from Nevermind, which rightfully explode from the mix just as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "In Bloom" seemed to slice through your Passat's shitty speakers on your way to high school. I still contend it's Grohl's punishing drum attack and not the famous four-chord riff that sells "Teen Spirit" (even Cobain admitted the song was a derivative pastiche of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and The Pixies), though Andy Wallace's slick-as-Valvoline mix remains the gold standard of the soft verse/loud chorus dynamic. Likewise, "Come as You Are" gleans its hook directly from Novoselic's rubbery bassline slithering in and out of the mix with frightening stealth.
But "Lithium" and "In Bloom" are wholly Cobain's, with references tailor-made for the American everyteen: "Today I've found my friends/ They're in my head"; "I'm so ugly, but that's okay 'cause so are you." Both knowingly turn the enthusiastic "yeah yeah yeah's" of the Beatles into snarling expressions of sarcasm-- an allusion literalized in the "In Bloom" video, which pitched Nirvana as 60s idols with matching outfits on an Ed Sullivan-esque variety show (which in turn inspired the complete wardrobe of vintage Weezer). It's interesting how Nevermind, written and recorded well before the crest of sudden fame crushed Cobain's spirit, almost seems more jaded than its successor-- "Teen Spirit" and "In Bloom" deriding fans as mindless drones that demand entertainment, yet "don't know what it means."
By contrast, In Utero, which begins with the words, "Teenage angst has paid off well/ Now I'm bored and old," and ends with an apology, is full of curiously thoughtful retractions and carefully worded sentiments. The provocatively titled "Heart-Shaped Box" and "Rape Me" represent Cobain's sympathy for, and fascination with, the female of the species. I've always considered "Heart-Shaped Box", with its elliptical guitar figure and explosive choruses, to be one of Cobain's most accomplished compositions. For all its heavy-handed symbolism, the song strikes deepest to Cobain's preoccupation with birth, the menstrual cycle, and female anatomy, wound tightly with primal tension in the verses and released with sublime catharsis in the choruses.
But "Rape Me"-- meant to be an anthem of empowerment from the perspective of the victim-- comes off as a shallow and transparent attempt to court controversy. The four-chord riff that drags the song through the motions is an almost direct inversion of the famous "Smells Like Teen Spirit" riff (Nirvana would often tease live audiences with a few licks from "Teen Spirit" before launching into its intellectually stunted first cousin). The seemingly tacked-on bridge ("My favorite inside source/ I'll kiss your open sores") is one of Cobain's most awkward, and I think most of us could have done without the distressed round-robin choruses of "Rape me! Rape me!" that close the song.
"Pennyroyal Tea" is presented here in a "previously unreleased" alternate mix (actually, it's widely available on the 'clean' version of In Utero) that basically nudges the guitars and Cobain's harmony vocals up ever so slightly. The mix was prepared by Scott Litt for a single withdrawn after Cobain's suicide (the single included "I Hate Myself and Want to Die" as a b-side). Cobain's fascination with female bodily processes continues (pennyroyal tea was famously used to induce abortion in colonial America) as he enumerates remedies he's tried to relieve his own pain-- warm milk and laxatives, but not heroin.
"Dumb" is one of Cobain's most underrated efforts, a populist revision of "Lithium" that replaces Nevermind's misanthropy with earnest self-deprecation. With a jaunty guitar hook that rivals "Polly" or "About a Girl", "Dumb" finds Cobain not sneering at his fans with distaste, but pining for the simple pleasures of wasting time and taking drugs (well, sniffing glue) with his friends. Kera Schaley's cello is "Dumb"'s secret weapon, overshadowing Novoselic's simple bassline and lending the bridge (hands down, Cobain's best) a transcendent country-rock lilt: "Skin the sun, fall asleep/ Wish away, the soul is cheap/ Lesson learned, wish me luck/ Soothe the burn, wake me up." The emphatic harmonies in the final refrains ("I think I'm DUMB, I think I'm DUMB...") are among Cobain's most vulnerable, successfully conveying a deep longing in a way that the overambitious "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Rape Me" miss completely.
Nirvana closes with two cuts from Unplugged in New York: a low-key reading of In Utero's somber "All Apologies" and an inspired cover of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World". Keen selections, but unfortunately the loss of fidelity between the crystalline studio recordings and a live performance that was only supposed to sound good on TV gives this collection a distinctly incomplete feeling.
So do I give Nirvana a 10.0 for the unimpeachable quality of the material, or a 2.0 for the crass cynicism for which it's exploited? I mean, this collection is by no means essential-- Nevermind and In Utero are. I almost wish that the release of Nirvana had been postponed another year so that Courtney Love could have seen Matador's illuminating and respectful double-disc packaging of Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted, which offers the original album, an entire live show, two Peel sessions, three singles, and previously unreleased material-- all for the same suggested retail price as Nirvana. The packaging includes hand-scribbled pages from Stephen Malkmus' notebooks (but not his whole goddamn diary) and liner notes written by band members and people who were actually there-- not just some rockcrit eager to unpack his adjectives. It's probably the best reissue of any album I've ever seen, and not just because it's an indie rock classic, but because it's assembled with such selfless affection.
By comparison, Nirvana feels like a rush job-- reverent to the memory of Kurt Cobain, but disrespectful, even patronizing, of his infinitely patient fans. It would have been fantastic, for instance, to finally hear the original Steve Albini mixes of "All Apologies" and "Heart-Shaped Box", or favorites like "Sappy" (a huge radio hit here in southern California) and "Spank Thru" placed in the greater context of Nirvana's better-known repertoire. Dozens of illuminating b-sides and compilation tracks (everything from covers of the Velvet Underground and the Wipers to a full-band reading of Grohl's excellent "Marigold") are conspicuously absent here, doubtlessly because the publishing royalties don't go to Love. But at least the floodgates are open, with both a rarities collection, and yes, that box set finally in the pipeline.
