[Strap in. I flipped pickles when I saw that punknews.org didn't have an In Utero
review. I like to bait the kids from time to time, so I made this mother wicked long and scholarly or whatever.]16 years after its release and 15 after the death of its primary creator Kurt Cobain, it feels almost pointless to review Nirvana’s studio swansong In Utero. Almost. The record topped numerous “best of” lists both in its day (Rolling Stone ranked it number one for 1993, while Village Voice gave it the number two slot) and since (Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Spin, and others have all factored it into some sort of rock retrospective, both ’90s-centric and otherwise). Plenty of words have already been dedicated to its description – Spin’s Charles Aaron delivered the best, most to-the-point review with “The difference between drums produced by Butch Vig and drums produced by Steve Albini is the difference between watching somebody get punched in the gut and being punched in the gut.” Rolling Stone’s Charles M. Young once wrote that “if you time the album, the dissonance would probably outweigh the melody by a factor of three to one – but the dissonance is compelling.” And Gillian G. Gaar’s 101-page look at the album for the 33 1/3 series, while at times tedious (she catalogues every In Utero demo ever), covers the album’s creation with a record collector’s obsession.
With so much hooplah about it, why bother reviewing In Utero? Well, for starters, it’s the only essential Nirvana release lacking from the Org’s vaults (Feel free to champion/tear down lesser works like Incesticide and From the Muddy Banks of Wishkah, ye hounds of the Internets). Which is a shame, since it’s a pretty good album that tends to get overshadowed by Nevermind’s cultural impact and MTV Unplugged in New York’s honesty, humor, and fragility. As Charles R. Cross once wrote, “If it is possible for an album that sold four million copies to be overlooked, or underappreciated, then In Utero is that lost pearl.” And based on the comments floating around on this site – “not to be a dick but they really sucked and i agree with everyone that said they sucked” and “This review reqlly sucked” – it seems there are a few looking to knock the grunge kings down. The more intelligent negative comments lash out at Cobain for his heroin-addiction, scene posturing, and really shitty parenting skills. Which are valid criticisms for Cobain the person, but not Cobain the musician. Not to oversimplify, but I think at least part of Nirvana’s backlash stems from the fact that one day they stopped being a band that sounded good and started being a band we’re expected to like, and then, maybe, to a band we’re expected to think was overhyped. You’d think the latter would stem from the former, but that leap is a big, alienating one.
So let’s compromise by forgetting that Nirvana conquered hair metal and Michael Jackson to champion the supposed underground rock movement. Let’s forget about Cobain’s contradictory, churlish press statements. And let’s forget about his world-shaking suicide, if only to evaluate In Utero without hype or hate or yesteryear reverence for context. Given that I was eight years old when Cobain’s body was discovered April 8, 1994, it’s easy for me to do. For me, it was a blip – I was more into Sega Genesis and Boyz II Men at the time. I hope these things are easy for you to ignore too. The only outside context you need is Nevermind, by which I mean the actual collection of songs, not the cultural juggernaut.
In Utero is the uglier, perhaps punker kid brother to the glossy yet powerful Nevermind. Almost everything about In Utero is a reaction to its predecessor – the lyrics are at times confused and angry, caught up in the haze that comes with fame, while digging deeper into personal issues. “Serve the Servants” hits both – “Teenage sex has paid off well/Now I’m bored and old” satirizes the band’s success, while “I tried hard to have a father/But instead I have a dad” hits the listener with familial strife through subtle word differences. The songs are also much more confrontational, both lyrically and musically, as evidenced by the dissonant “Scentless Apprentice” and the rather direct “Rape Me.” Even its poppiest track, the single “Heart-Shaped Box,” bears a muddied guitar tone and a dissonant solo. All of which is thanks to the record’s engineer, Steve Albini.
Albini was chosen to record In Utero specifically because he was Butch Vig’s opposite. Vig has helmed some great, spit-shined rock breakthroughs, such as Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, AFI’s Sing the Sorrow, and Against Me!’s New Wave. If you want to blow up, he’s your man, thanks to lots of overdubbing and glossing. Albini, by willful contrast, achieves power by different, seemingly simpler methods – well-placed mics, spacious rooms with good acoustics, and an emphasis on sounding live (or “real” if you prefer). No one sounds quite like Albini, but he makes the recording process sound so easy. As a result, In Utero’s dry sound is enhanced by dirge-y guitar/bass and seemingly bottomless drum sounds. Dave Grohl, one of the best drummers of the ’90s, gets his best sound on tracks like “Scentless Apprentice” and “All Apologies.” Even with additional vocal tracks, strings, and guitar overdubs, the record still sounds raw.
But In Utero doesn’t just succeed thanks to Albini’s aesthetically pleasing techniques. Ya still gotta have the right tunes, man. “Serve the Servants” announces In Utero as a wholly different animal with its distorted opening note – a ’90s update of The Beatles’ single attention-grabbing chord from “A Hard Day’s Night” if I might be so bold. “Scentless Apprentice” ratchets the harshness up a notch. “Heart-Shaped Box” is haunting by comparison, hitting the listener with a mix of cancerous, romantic, feminine, and mournful images. It’s a fucked-up love song. A bitter diatribe. “Rape Me,” with and without contrast, is a lot less convoluted or fleetingly sweet. It’s about being used, and Cobain uses his voice to inject meaning into the fairly basic lyrics (He says the title a lot). By the song’s end, Cobain, with Grohl on back-up, drowns out all the music with his angry urge to be abused. It’s daring and energetic.
The record’s first half or so, for all its ebb and flow, is pretty cohesive. The second half diverges. Relatively gentle, Lennon-esque tunes like “Dumb,” “Pennyroyal Tea,” and “All Apologies” are spread among freakouts like “Milk It,” “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter,” and “Tourette’s.” The listener can never fully get comfortable here, but everything is catchy so who cares. Cobain reveals a knack for pop genius on “All Apologies” and shreds his vocal chords seconds earlier on “Tourette’s,” and it all works.
“You Know You’re Right” left me hoping for a great “lost” fourth Nirvana album. With the Lights Out proved that, if there is such a thing, it’s going to take time and editing before anything close emerges. But maybe it’s OK if it never happens. Nirvana left behind three immaculate studio albums, plus Unplugged, arguably their best album overall. Regardless of when the next rarities set drops, there’s In Utero to punch me in the gut every time.
Thoughts: Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, is pretty dissonant overall, but it reveals the occasional pop leaning, like on “About a Girl.” “Sliver,” released a year after Bleach and before Nevermind, shows Cobain’s pop sensibilities growing. It’s still grunge, but it’s catchy as heck. The hook – “Grandma take me home!” – gets a little overused near the end, but that could be attributed to Cobain’s love of Pixies and the Vaselines. “Dive,” on the flipside, is a more prototypically grunge, which in a way also hints at where Nirvana was going for Nevermind. That album is a mix of poppy sensibilities mixed with primal aggression, and “Sliver” and “Dive” both predict this evolution. Also the weird phone conversation at the end of side A is funny. Also awkward.
Like most young people, I didn’t hear Nirvana until “Smells Like Teen Spirit” blitzkrieged the airwaves. I didn’t actually buy a Nirvana album until high school, when my friend Rob sold me his copies of Nevermind and In Utero, sans cases, for $10. I still have those CDs, although I wish I could read the liner notes sometime. In Utero slowly became my favorite Nirvana album – I’ll take Steve Albini manning the soundboards over Butch Vig any day – with its abrasive, sarcastic tunes. It yielded Nirvana’s best single/video (“Heart-Shaped Box”), its most haunting songs (“Dumb,” “Pennyroyal Tea,” and “All Apologies” are all better than “Polly”), and even its punkest material (“Radio Friendly Unit Shifter,” “Tourette’s”). It’s beautifully dissonant and one-ups Nevermind’s aggression with better songcraft.
In Utero’s opposite is Unplugged in New York. It’s mostly acoustic (aside from notorious exception “The Man Who Sold the World” by David Bowie) and a lot more low key. After Cobain’s suicide, it plays out like a wake with the funeral dirges and flowers. I remember looking for clues in the video broadcast that he was going to kill himself, but I’ve more or less burned myself out on that. Cobain wrote about suicide and guns an awful lot. He also wrote a lot of songs about vaginas and/or incoherent screaming. So it goes. Nowadays, I listen to Unplugged and enjoy the so-called softer side of Nirvana. “About a Girl,” from Bleach, sounds better in this refined version. I got my first taste of the Meat Puppets, the Vaselines, and Bowie through this recording. The band is even funny in parts, cracking wise in this intimate setting in between soul-rattling performances. The songs are amazing, the settling is casual, and on certain days, this is the best Nirvana release we will likely ever see. To that end, I own the performance three times over: CD, LP, DVD.
