Classic Album Review : Nirvana - In Utero (1993)
When a famous musician dies, the way people only mildly gave a shit about them while they were living instantly changes. They’re granted a cultural importance they never could enjoy in their lifetime. That never quite happened to Kurt Cobain. Because he was all people could think about while he was alive. His band Nirvana was literally the biggest band in the world from 1991 to his untimely passing in 1994, making it almost impervious to revisionist history.
The keyword here being almost.
Nirvana’s only post-Nevermind album In Utero was never going to be what Cobain wanted it to. His struggle to make it a difficult, antagonistic record is well chronicled in Chuck Klosterman’s essay Oh, the Guilt, but time and Kurt Cobain’s passing changed the cultural perception of In Utero YET AGAIN. It’s now the Nirvana record you kind of have to prefer. The one closest to Cobain’s essential artistic vision, which couldn’t be any more false.
In Utero is contrarian rock. It’s meant to be everything Nevermind wasn’t and perhaps nothing expresses that more purely than the ugly, dissonant chord that kickstarts Serve the Servants. It’s not exactly a song I would call difficult, but it’s abrasive and confrontational. The follow-up Scentless Apprentice has a looser, more meandering structure closer to noise rock sensibilities and abstract lyrics inspired by Patrick Suskind’s novel The Perfume.
These two songs are a good primer to what In Utero is really like.
What are not a good primer to what In Utero is really like are the following two songs: Heart-Shaped Box and Rape Me, arguably the only two songs from the record people remember. There’s a reason for that. In 1993, people still bought their music on CD and it was easy to listen to only one or two songs over and over again. These two were the most Nevermind-like songs on the record, so it’s understandable most Nirvana fans gravitated towards these.
I personally think Rape Me is a Smells Like Teen Spirit knockoff with an obscure anti-rape stance, but that Heart-Shaped Box is really good. It has that powerful, dry sarcasm that is so characteristic of Kurt Cobain’s writing and the emotional instability of the song is reflected in its syncopated structure. It has the same slow/hard/slow dynamics as the Nevermind hits do, but it’s overflowing with a wordless anger and a sadness that make it oddly uncomfortable.
In Utero also has songs like Pennyroyal Tea and All Apologies, which people didn’t know existed until the release of Nirvana’s immortal Unplugged record. They are, by far, the two most straightforward and melodic songs on In Utero. Cobain claims to have written Pennyroyal Tea in 30 seconds and recorded it 30 minutes. It’s both unsurprising and mildly frustrating that it became such a hit in retrospect. It’s the closest Nirvana’s been to writing alternative rock.
But otherwise In Utero is loud, unrepentantly dissonant and jagged. Songs like Milk It , Tourette’s or Radio Friendly Unit Shifter (which are never really discussed) are built around meandering guitar riffs and obsessive repetition that really achieve the adversarial effect Kurt Cobain was looking for. In Utero is (mostly) a noise rock record. It isn’t the realest manifestation of Cobain’s punk rock ethos. That record exist, though. It is Nirvana’s debut Bleach.
Why did the legacy of one Nirvana’s record replaced the other? I believe it’s because a massive audience was part of the In Utero “process” if you will. They understood what Kurt Cobain wanted it to be and they made it that. The only problem is that he didn’t want his audience to bend the reality to his will. He wanted them to be angry and confused. Unfortunately for him, it would never happen. It couldn’t happen. Whatever he did was what everybody automatically wanted.
Is In Utero a good album? Most definitely. Although it FEELS more authentic than Nevermind, it doesn’t have nearly the number of hits-per-square-inch its monstrous predecessor had. I do love In Utero’s jagged brashness and its confrontational nature, but it is not the record people remember it to be. It is customary to remember In Utero to be Nirvana’s best purest record, but it’s not true. It is a conflicted, twisted pile of ideas soaked in a lot of anger.
The record you remember In Utero to be is Bleach.
8.1/10
