headlessparrot's Full Review: Nirvana by Nirvana (US)
There are only a scant few number of bands or musical artists out there today that can say, without question, that they actually and literally changed the face of music. And even if you can find one, it’s more than likely that they didn’t change it for the positive. The only four bands that immediately come to mind when I think of changing our perception of popular music are The Beatles (duh), Run DMC (duh), The Ramones, and Nirvana. To a lesser extent, there were also the Led Zeppelins and the Pink Floyds, but we could go on for days arguing whether or not their impact on popular culture had any sort of lasting effect, or that it even was of their own creating. I suppose, anyways.
The Beatles are obvious in this category. Essentially, these guys created the standard pop-rock song in the same style as it is heard today. They blended the soulful guitar of the blues with the pop melodies of previous pop vocal groups. Run DMC, again, are a no-brainer. They almost single-handedly exposed the entire genre of rap/hip-hop to the suburban youth of America (we could debate for hours whether or not this in and of itself was a good thing, but at least these boys’ intentions were good and they produced some excellent music). The Ramones developed what is now commonly seen as “punk rock” and helped it grow the world over, resulting in such great acts as The Clash and Black Flag.
The last name in the category, though, is something altogether different. Well, it’s not really all that different, but it seems different to me and the current 15 to 20-somethings on the North American continent because we actually experienced it. In fact, right now we’re even experiencing the backlash of it (although technically, we’re also feeling the backlash from the hip-hop and punk movements too, but again, although I’m good at pointing out my own contradictions, I rarely ever do something to fix them). The radio airways of Canada and the U.S. are being clogged with bands whom are not trying to sound like Nirvana, but trying to sound like bands that were already trying to sound like Nirvana. The result is twice watered-down cola not dissimilar to the RC brand. Yeecch! That stuff is awful!
Anyways, what I’m getting at here is that Nirvana is one of the few bands in the history of rock, nay, all of music, who can actually look back and say “we changed the way people listen to and create music.” And that’s nary a statement to be made lightly. In fact, it created so much pressure and weighed so heavily on one Kurt Donald Cobain that he ultimately took his own life with a self-inflicted shotgun wound. And while some may maintain that he is a selfish, cowardly as*hole for doing so, it’s hard to disagree that he was instrumental in the revival of music that had actual emotional depth.
Kurt Cobain was exactly what the world needed in 1990 when the hair bands began to divide and multiply exponentially while continuing to create music devoid of any emotion except for…. Ummm…. Is dressing like a woman an emotion? No? Damn. Lost my train of thought. Yeah, so Kurt Cobain came along as part of what is now recognized as the most well known band of the 1990s (like them or hate them, you still have to admit this). They succeeded not because the record companies wished it so (in fact the companies believed that the group would sell 200,000 copies of Nevermind, at max), but because there was a human and emotional element to their song writing.
Cobain melded deafeningly loud blasts of feedback with wildly strummed power chords - but most of all, he employed the use of a strong pop hook and meaningful, almost poetic lyrics. In fact, Kurt would admit to anyone who would listen that much of the writing of Nevermind took place after a marathon session listening to Meet The Beatles - perhaps the most hook-laden album in rock history.
The fact that he could create a hook wasn’t particularly unique, although his aptitude at it was certainly impressive. Rather, it was something else that set him apart from the crowd. It was his ability to blend those pop hooks with a punk rock sensibility that made Nirvana a driving force in the early 90s rock scene. And it’s exactly this reason that Nirvana, the bands retrospective greatest hits, is mediocre at best.
But let’s start from the beginning, shall we? An ongoing court battle has been raging long and hard since the suicide of Kurt Cobain. His bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Noveselic, being the only two remaining members of Nirvana, decided that it would be best to remember the ten-year anniversary of the release of Nevermind with a box set of rarities and live materials. Unfortunately, someone failed to inform Courtney Love, Kurt’s widowed bride and crackwh*re extraordinaire, that she was never a member of Nirvana, and so she became entangled in a legal battle to stop the release of the box set. Her reason? Well, one of the songs intended to be on the set was potentially worth millions. That song, of course, is You Know You’re Right. So the ten-year anniversary of Nevermind came and went, and everyone was left disappointed (although far from surprised at Love’s actions). But bartering continued, and after a parade of personal attacks, it was finally agreed that there would first be a greatest hits album released, which would then be followed by a box set. It has to be presumed that the reason for this is nothing more than a case of “how much money can you get from the record-buying public.” And unfortunately for us, this game is one that usually works.
But who will buy a Nirvana greatest hits if they already have all of the group’s studio albums? Herein lies the only reason that Nirvana (as this greatest hits collection has been dubbed) is an essential album. You Know You’re Right was slated to become the album’s centrepiece, the piece de la resistance, if you will. And unfortunately, the record execs got way ahead of us and decided not to release the aforementioned song as a single - meaning that you either get the unreleased song and thirteen songs that have been driven into the grave, or nothing at all. And frankly, Nirvana is just to important of a band historically and musically speaking, to not have this track in your record collection. Especially if you’re a completist like me. Or just an all-around obsessive and creepy person.
So I’ve already established that this is an essential album, but unfortunately, it’s also a generally mediocre one all around. The disc begins with You Know You’re Right, the last track that Nirvana ever recorded together in a studio. Also referred to occasionally as a long list of other names when performed in concert, the track is essentially… Well, it’s Nirvana. Simple as that. It combines Cobain’s angst-ridden vocal performance of a well-written, cynical and bitter song, with a good hook. It follows the standard quiet-loud-quiet, verse-chorus-verse structure, but yet it never sounds derivative of the bands own work. You Know You’re Right begins with Cobain strumming the guitar strings above the fretboard of the guitar, near the tuning pegs, but then builds with a slow thumping bassline and a soft tapping of the drums. As the chorus is reached, Cobain cries out the word “pain” as if in physical agony and the group goes wild with feedback and wild amounts of distortion. The sarcastic, cynical, and ironic tone of the song are really what set it apart, but it is truly a painful glance into Kurt’s tortured psyche.
I will never bother you
I will never promise to
I will never follow you
I will never bother you
Never speak a word again
I will crawl away for Good
I will move away from here
You won't be afraid of fear
No thought was put into this
I always knew it would come to this
Things have never been so swell
I have never failed to fail
As far as the highlights go, this is really it, unless you’re not well versed in the Nirvana universe at all. While there really isn’t a bad song on this compilation, there are too many glaring omissions and nothing that represents what the “real” Nirvana was. In fact, my point is made just by looking at the next track. About A Girl is the only song on this record that was taken from Bleach. This makes sense from a record company’s point of view, but not for the fan. Although About A Girl is a well written and very polished song, there are other cuts from Bleach that are much closer to the band’s vision. Floyd The Barber for example, is a great hard song, as are School, and one of the most glaring omissions in Love Buzz - Nirvana’s very first single for Sub Pop records. It may be a cover, but that’s entirely beside the point.
Nirvana follows a chronological listing, based more upon when a song was recorded as opposed to when it was released (with the exception of YKYR of course, which is odd to me - it’s like putting the money shot before the sex scene. Am I right?). That means, in case you weren’t paying attention, that About A Girl is followed by two cuts from Incesticide (even though Incesticide was released after Nevermind, just about everything on it was recorded prior) - two infectious, simplistic and repetitive numbers in Been A Son and Sliver. I can’t argue with these choices, although Aneurysm probably should have been selected.
The worst exemptions, by far though, come from Nirvana’s two major label albums. For the most part, the track selection sticks to the poppiest songs, straying away from anything even remotely out of the ordinary or raw. As a result, we miss out on some great songs that give a more honest picture of Nirvana. Of the four songs chosen from Nevermind, there isn’t one that truly displays the band at their songwriting best. In fact, this is home to the most disappointing of track choices. Polly, an emotionally stirring song about rape based on a news story, isn’t one of the four choices. Rather, those choices are the most obvious possible: Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come As You Are, and Lithium - and while I can’t complain with the last, the first two are hardly the two most noteworthy pieces on Nevermind.
In Utero gets jilted perhaps even worse, with only three songs making the cut, and only Dumb being worthy of its spot. We get no Serve The Servants, the rawest display of pure emotion, and we get none of the hard edged cynicism of Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle - which is my favourite Nirvana song and definitely worthy of a greatest hits mention.
The final two tracks are drawn from Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance - again meaning that the listener gets the short end of the stick because we don’t get to hear the band in a loud and live environment - an environment where the group did some of their best work. And while the Unplugged performance is an absolutely amazing record on the whole, it loses some of its emotional power when torn apart for the sake of a compilation.
The real problem with this compilation is that it never gets dirty. I just don't "feel" the track selection, and I have to wonder who was in charge of making it, because some of the most haunting and beautiful songs were passed over simply because they were never picked up by the radio.
In all fairness, Nirvana is worth at least a two-record set that would combine their biggest hits with some of their more obscure and darker fare. For what it’s worth, though, this compilation provides the big ones - which could be construed as a good or bad thing. You get the hits, but you never really get anything with remarkable depth. And that's something that even a casual listener should get to hear.
14 songs newly remastered featuring the previously unreleased You Know You re Right , the last song written and recorded by Kurt Cobain before his dea...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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