blksqul's Full Review: MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana (US)
This marks the third time I've tried to write a review of Nirvana Unplugged in New York. What makes it so hard to exactly pinpoint the magic and the fear behind this release? Well, for one thing, nearly half of the songs in this performance weren't even written by Kurt Cobain. So I'm always a little leary when people tout Unplugged in New York as Nirvana's pinnacle, but find Bleach too clangy, Nevermind too shiny, Incesticide too obscure and In Utero too dirgy. In short, they prefer Kurt as karaoke performer over Kurt as musician and artist in his own right.
It doesn't help that the album's strongest moments -- Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam, The Man Who Sold the World, Lake of Fire and Where Did You Sleep Last Night? -- are all covers. There are a few revelations in what Kurt penned himself (mainly About a Girl, Pennyroyal Tea and On a Plain). But these treasures are not as readily apparent or as heart-wrenching as the covers. This album shows Kurt as music fan more than musician; he has such good taste in music that he makes each cover sound like something dropped from heaven into the popular canon, while making his own material sound more muted and lamentable, strangled in self-loathing.
However, there is one reason why I'm giving this release five stars: I see its use as a recruiting tool. My 50-year-old roommate, who loves old-time country, Josh Groban and Nora Jones, loves this release so much that she asked me to pick it up for her if I ever see it cheap in a used bin. This is not a small feat, because there's lots of music my roommate loves that she doesn't care to own the CD for. Also, my fiancee's best friend thinks The Man Who Sold the World, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, and -- interestingly enough -- Plateau, are Nirvana's best songs, even though Nirvana didn't write them. So I can see that this album has across-the-board appeal. My hope is that people will want to explore deeper into Nirvana's catalog based on this album. It would be a shame if, 30 years from now, I walked into a record store to the Nirvana section to see it overstocked with Unpluggeds and only be able to get In Utero on special-order import. But hey, it's not my problem. I've got the albums already.
I'm going to talk about all the songs I've already mentioned as highlights, plus Plateau in respect of Lori's friend. The rest of the songs, frankly, don't differ drastically from their studio versions. Just subtract the storm surge of electricity and replace it with quiet, approaching clouds. They're still wonderful songs, and wonderful performances. But best heard, I think, on the original albums.
About a Girl opens with Kurt quietly mumbling "Here's a song off our first record. Most people don't know it." An interesting choice of words, and revealing ones. There's a bit of humor in it, a bit of bite, a lot of nervousness and almost a sense of pride, as though, "Here we are now, entertain us, the big monster rock band, and we have a song that most of you guys haven't heard." Now, the original version of this song, off of Bleach, is a standout, though it suffers from poor production, making it hard to separate the instruments and leaving an almost mono clanging in your ears. This version has been slowed down, prettied up, and made into a stumbly-scarred showcase for Kurt's words of hurt and need, buoyed up on a Beatles-ish melody line. Beautiful and moving. It's both a song off their first album and a new start for the band.
Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam is a cover of one of Kurt's all-time favorite bands, the Vaselines. For those who have heard the band, you'd know they can be both wide-eyed child-like and juvenile in equal amounts, wearing cloaks of irony that still can't hide their sugar-sweet melodies and soft hearts. (no wonder Kurt loved them) For this song, the Vaselines took a Christian standard from their Scottish schooling and subverted it, making it a song about how Jesus DOESN'T want them, and in return, they don't want Jesus. It's all done good naturedly to hide the blasphemous undercurrent, making it all the more subversive. What I love about this song is Krist Novoselic's ghostly accordian playing. He perfectly captures an otherworldly grace, with Kurt and Dave Grohl's voices lifting up the words and pulling back the veil. It's well known that after Nirvana's success began, Kurt did not get along well with the rest of the band (to the point of staying in a separate tour bus). Knowing that makes this moment, this cohesion of the band, a tear-jerking valentine. A heart-shaped box.
The Man Who Sold the World brings in a bit of electricity in Kurt's lone, plaintive guitar figure, but we can forgive a little cheating, because Kurt takes David Bowie's original and turns it into a Nirvana standard as it's playing. Again, you can see why Kurt chose this song to cover. A story of a wanderer meeting an ancient, haunted man -- perhaps a king? -- and then the wanderer realizing that he, himself, is the haunted one. Tail tasting mouth tasting tail. Blistering in its silence.
I gained a bit more insight into the importance of Kurt's rendition of Pennyroyal Tea through reading Charles Cross' "Heavier Than Heaven." Kurt did not show up to rehearsals for the Unplugged performance, and was in so much pain during soundcheck that he lay on the couch and would not move until a special delivery he had set up arrived. Euphemism for heroin? Probably. He was so nervous about this performance that he requested that people he knew -- including his lawyer, people from Gold Mountain (his management company), and lackeys from Geffen and MTV sat in the front row. The only smile anybody had seen on Kurt's face all day came after a crack one of the Kirkwood brothers (of Meat Puppets fame) made about chewing gum.
At one point in this version of Pennyroyal Tea, Kurt pauses, forgets where he is, then blears out in a cracked voice "I'm on warm milk and laxatives," the opening line of the third verse. In that moment, Kurt decided to go for passion rather than technical perfection, and his decision both charges the end of Pennyroyal Tea with triumph, and gives the audience a collective sigh of relief. You'll notice from this point on that Kurt jokes around a bit more, eases into things a little more, and even talks to the audience more (though always in the distancing third person -- "these people" as opposed to "you"). It's such a small moment that it took a book to dig this hidden treasure up. But once you know it, it stays with you, and makes you root for the band all the more.
On a Plain isn't a drastic revision of Nevermind's version, but it was when I heard Unplugged that I finally understood the power and beauty of the song. It's a good song on Nevermind, but so full of electric guitar that the subtle shifts in mood are lost. Here they are aired in their full glory, and once you learn the words, it makes the version on Nevermind stand out that much more. One of my personal, intimate favorites.
As if to drive the point of personal, intimate favorites home, Plateau shows up. Frankly, I don't think this is Kurt's best singing, but the melody has its own loopy charm and the words are freaky and fun. You can see him trying this song on, and it almost, almost fits him. He tries a second time with Oh Me, which lets him more comfortably fit into his register, but it's really the third Meat Puppets song, Lake of Fire, that soars out of the speakers and finds its own, unique place to nestle in your mind. The way Kurt screams "die!" while still sounding acoustic, the tortured playing, wafts of the crypt and celebration at the same time -- it's an amazing performance (and one that makes me want to seek out Meat Puppets II).
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? makes encores obsolete. Leadbelly's song is given a ferocious reading, with such vigor, anger and loss that the pines in the song seem to become real, standing tall and silently, hiding murderesses and lost causes. In my previous review of this song, I went into detail on each line and how destructively cathartic the song was as a whole. But I think my roommate, Jarre, said it best when she heard this rendition. "That's not even Leadbelly's best song!" she said, open mouthed. "Holy sh--."
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