Nirvana - In Utero: Album Review

Nirvana, In Utero (Geffen, 1993)
Since today's the 10th anniversary of the day Kurt Cobain decided to take the easy way out (although not the day they actually found his rotting corpse--the day people actually remember), I figured it might be interesting to take a look back at one of his albums. I picked this one just because it happened to be the one I had handy, but this should be cool anyway--a chance to take a look back at the other Nirvana album, the one everyone pretty much knows about, but nobody really listens to as much--the Tusk to Nevermind's Rumours, if you will, reviewed by the champion of a run-on sentence.

The deal with this album, if for some reason you haven't already heard, was that Kurt & the Gang brought in famous album "recordist" Steve Albini to, um, record it; I'm assuming because they were looking to make their own sort of Surfer Rosa, basically a few kickass pop songs surrounded by a bunch of tossed-off sounding noise songs. The noise songs, even though I pretty much like 'em, don't really sound as tossed-off (or good for that matter) as the Pixies' ones--not surprising considering that wasn't really their thing, but it wasn't that far off from their thing that they couldn't pull it off. Still, I maintain that an albumful of songs like "Hear Shaped Box" would've been preferable to the album in its current state. Oh well.

I should probably also mention that, being a Steve Albini "recording," it comes with all of the hallmarks (defects?) you'd pretty much expect--basically the drums are way louder than they'd be otherwise (yay!) and it sounds as if the mic is turned away from Kurt's face while he's trying to sing into it (wtf is w/ that anyway?).

SERVE THE SERVANTS

This first track is more or less representive of the more "poppy" songs on the album. In general, the riffs are heavier and more ragged-sounding than anything on Nevermind, which is cool as far as I'm concerned, but, other than that, this wouldn't be entirely out of place on that album. And I'm feeling the lyrics ("Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I'm bored and old").

SCENTLESS APPRENTICE

But then the second song is more representative of the noisier half of the album. It's more metal sounding and I can't really understand what the fuck Kurt is saying more often than not but his screaming is impressive and so is that little ascending guitar figure leading into the chorus.

HEART SHAPED BOX

Unless you were somehow born in 1998 and happen to be reading this, I would assume you pretty much already know the deal with this song. It came on MTV a whole lot back in the day even though I don't think it was as ever as big of a hit as they might've expected it to be. I think the thing is, it's angry like "Teen Spirit" and the rest of their hits, but you can't really dance to it. The lyrics are kinda weird too, but who gives a shit about lyrics anyway?

RAPE ME

Man, I like this song. I mean, it's basically a ripoff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but it's better because it's about rape. I can put it on and pretend like I'm sensitive to women's issues. The dynamic shift between the chorus and the verse is about as dramatic as it gets, as far as that's concerned, especially with the loud ass drums on this album.

FRANCES FARMER WILL HAVE HER REVENGE ON SEATTLE

Album filler, basically. Not bad album filler, mind you, but not especially good album filler either. As many times as I've heard it, I can never really remember how it goes, but when it comes on, I pretty much tap my feet. It's also got that cool mic-feedback thing going on leading into the chorus, which I'm assuming was a deliberate trick, but maybe it was just one of those happy accidents.

DUMB

Which brings us to "Dumb," one of the more subdued numbers on the album and supposedly the kind of song Kurt would've started writing more of had he not eaten his shotgun because he was tired of having to scream all the got damn time. I'm feeling this one.

VERY APE

Again, I can't really understand what the hell Kurt is saying in this song more often than not, but damnit if I'm not tapping my feet. This one doesn't have the world's most memorable melody, but at least they cranked up the BPMs compared to most of the rest of the album.

MILK IT

Um... yeah. This is probably one of the more shittier and heavy metal-sounding of the noisier songs on this album. I usually don't skip it or anything, but I wouldn't really try to make a case for it either. For what they were trying to do here, I guess you can say they pulled it off well enough, but when I go to listen to Nirvana, I'm usually looking to hear crap like "Rape Me." If I wanted to hear shit like this, I could go stand in some shitty group of 8th graders' garage or some shit.

PENNYROYAL TEA

This was either a single or was about to be a single around the time Courtney blew Kurt's face off, so I guess I'm supposed to like it, but to be honest with you, I was never really feeling it. It's just stupid. It's that same formula Kurt used on a bunch of other songs, but here it sounds like it's already starting to wear thin.

RADIO FRIENDLY UNIT SHIFTER

The "What is wrong with me?" song. As far as album filler goes, it's not half that bad. I think the reason why I prefer it to, say, "Milk It" is that this one is a bit faster, more punkish and less heavy metal-sounding.

TOURETTE'S

This one's pretty awesome, I think. I like the way Kurt's screaming and the music keeps getting more and more intense from one verse to the next until it finally just explodes all over the place like so many pieces of Kurt's skull.

ALL APOLOGIES

You know what's gay, I can't even remember the last time I heard this song on the radio and it wasn't the unplugged version, which is cool in a way, but can't really compare to this version because it doesn't have the same loud ass drums. Other than that and the "All in all is all we are" part at the end, to be honest with you, this song is not really all that great. It's cool, but I think that it's mostly the fact that it's the last song on the last Nirvana album which gives it a sort of mystique.

So yeah, if Cobain wasn't all crazy and on drugs and everything and hadn't killed himself, I wouldn't be surprised if he would've gone on to make better albums than this one--ones that better capitalized on his strengths as a songwriter--and this one would've been remembered as the somewhat failed attempt to do whatever it is he was trying to do on this album, but instead he chose to chew lead so we're basically left to try to parse out the worthwhile moments that are here and wonder what might've been.