Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)

1) Smells Like Teen Spirit; 2) In Bloom; 3) Come as You Are; 4) Breed; 5) Lithium; 6) Polly; 7) Territorial Pissings; 8) Drain You; 9) Lounge Act; 10) Stay Away; 11) On a Plain; 12) Something in the Way / Endless, Nameless [hidden track]; 20th Anniversary Deluxe edition bonus tracks (The B-Sides): 13) Even in His Youth; 14) Aneurysm; 15) Curmudgeon; 16) D-7 (Live at the BBC); 17) Been a Son (Live); 18) School (Live); 19) Drain You (Live); 20) Sliver (Live); 21) Polly (Live)
Deluxe Edition CD2: The Smart Studio Sessions 1) In Bloom; 2) Immodium (Breed); 3) Lithium; 4) Polly; 5) Pay to Play; 6) Here She Comes Now; 7) Dive; 8) Sappy; The Boombox Rehearsals 9) Smells Like Teen Spirit; 10) Verse Chorus Verse; 11) Territorial Pissings; 12) Lounge Act; 13) Come as You Are; 14) Old Age; 15) Something in the Way; 16) On a Plain; BBC Sessions 17) Drain You; 18) Something in the Way

Key Tracks: "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as You Are", "Something in the Way"

It destroyed hair metal and created a generation of angry teenagers, but it's actually quite fun isn't it? And iconic, sure, but not perfect - though you can understand why this became such a Big Thing.

I’m absolutely positive Nevermind is a hugely nostalgic album for a lot of us who grew up in the 90s but in my case it’s not even because of myself; my sister is to blame for that. She was a huge Nirvana fan and because we lived in adjacent rooms with a paper-thin wall separating our respective realms, the Nirvana catalogue became incredibly familiar and a part of the everyday soundtrack. I can’t say I liked the band at the time (the music tastes of my teenage sister and my prepubescent self were… different) but somehow Nirvana became a comfortable part of my everyday life. A shockingly large amount of their catalogue has been deeply engrained into my brain on a subconscious level and even though I only got into them myself much, much later down the line, I already feel like I’m a long-time fan just because of how familiar it all sounds.

Even though Nevermind is commonly viewed as the soundtrack of the misunderstood and disaffected youth of the early 90s, it feels more upbeat than anything particularly angry or melancholy - I’d actually call it a downright fun album for most parts, no matter the lyrical content (admittedly, Kurt’s joker off-record persona and grim sense of humour has really soiled their dark and brooding image for me, even though I fully know how tragically it all ended for him). It’s got the sound of a garage band having fun together, creating a lot of really noisy but really bouncy choruses to sing along to: if there’s one particular important factor in Cobain & co’s music, it’s how engaging to the listener it is. Nirvana only knew how to do a very few things (or at least they rarely got the chance to show their full range before the band’s end) but they performed those few tricks really well and, most importantly, with a lot of charisma. Whatever musical potholes there may be here and there, it’s Cobain’s charisma and presence that fills them and turns them into very satisfying moments of primal energy and teenage aggression. Nevermind’s songs are simple and they’re not particularly interesting lyrically but they’re inviting songs, highly resonant and quite often really fun. Even the rather somber “Polly” feels almost jovial in its over-the-top seriousness. The only really, genuinely melancholy moment of the album is “Something in the Way” at the very end and it is a really great song, one of the best on the album: completely at odds with the eleven tracks before it, but simultaneously acting as the one moment where the album’s darker undercurrents stop hiding behind catchy guitar racket.

Nevermind’s reputation precedes it and a lot more, lot better writers have done thinkpieces on its place in history and analysed its music, and it is worth all that for pop cultural reasons. It’s never cemented itself as a personal classic for me but it’s still a lot of good fun. It has its nostalgic vibes for me and it’s very vivid in how it represents its era of music, but ultimately it doesn’t cut very deep. Both the songs and the sound are fairly straightforward so there’s not much more to it than meets the eye and all in all it carries the vibe that in order to truly appreciate it, it has to have come into your life during a pivotal moment of your musical journey. I don’t want to downplay its charms though - when you’re in the mood for exactly what it offers it can be a riot, and rather amazingly its big hits still sound quite fresh in my ears. “Come as You Are”, “In Bloom”, “Lithium” and obviously “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are all modern rock classics and miles ahead anything else on the album. Even “Teen Spirit” has endured through all the radio overplay, the pointless covers and the amateur guitarist treatments, and still sounds just as vital as it always has been. It is utterly one of the defining songs of the 90s and the capsulation of all the teenage slacker apathy that we associate with the era, much more than any song of its generation.

A word on the 20th anniversary edition which I happen to own. It hosts the ideal set of bonus material you’d want with a release like it: all the studio b-sides, a selection of live cuts and a bunch of demos and alternative versions. However, the material here isn’t really all that exciting. The studio b-sides are all fairly dull and clear quality control outtakes and the live material works but doesn’t make a strong enough case for you to return to them actively. The second disc is devoted to various demos but given how Nevermind is a fairly straightforward set of songs with a simple production job in the first case, the demos are mainly just shoddily recorded versions of their album selves that aren’t worth the tim and the few non-album cuts that appear among the demos barely register. The one bright spot is the live version of “Something in the Way” hidden at the very end: the mournful cello of the studio cut is replaced by anguished guitar wailing and makes for an incredible alternative version that’s miles ahead anything else on the disc. Unless you’re a hardcore Nirvana maniac that lives and breathes for every note the band made, there won’t be anything else worth extended listening among the extras – casual fans are safe to skip these completely.

Rating: 7/10