Nirvana - In Utero: 20th Anniversary Edition (Album Review)
Friday, 27 September 2013
Written by Huw Baines
If any record has new things to say 20 years after its initial bow, it’s Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’. Released at a time when Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl were chewing their way through the inevitable backlash that accompanied ‘Nevermind’, it has since become a prisoner of tragic circumstance, evoking time and place in a manner that wasn’t intended by its creators.
Cobain’s suicide posthumously informs every Nirvana song, but his presence is more keenly felt on ‘In Utero’ than anywhere else. It is crammed with tangents and diversions that suggest a whole new Nirvana could have sprouted from its branches, coating the record in a layer of melancholy that often obscures the true purpose of its songs.
And, what songs they are. This reissue has led to a rekindling of the ‘Nevermind’ v ‘In Utero’ debate and while that’s a particularly thorny, reductive issue, there are high points here that could go toe-to-toe with anything else the band ever recorded.
At a time when Nirvana were flanked by feckless proto-Kroegers at every turn, ‘In Utero’ proved beyond any doubt that Cobain was way, way ahead of the curve and producing some of the most challenging, coruscatingly funny work of his life.
This reissue is a weighty tome, clocking in with three CDs - including a complete live show from Seattle in 1993 - and everything bar the kitchen sink in terms of the recording process. Much has been made of the instrumental jam christened Forgotten Tune and while it has curio value, the real treasure here comes in the form of Steve Albini’s 2013 mix of the record, which was undertaken alongside Grohl and Novoselic.
Fiercely independent and DIY, Albini’s production was quick and organic, the opposite to the huge, slick Butch Vig sound on ‘Nevermind’. His hiring provoked a shitstorm from the media and hand-wringing label types, which was stoked even further by the drafting in of Scott Litt to tinker with vocals and bass on certain tracks post-recording.
In 20/20 hindsight, he was just what the band needed and his new take on the tracks produces some notable changes. Everything is dialled down a degree or two, with Novoselic’s bass beautifully fuzzy and hammered right at the heart of things. We are treated to Cobain’s vocals higher in the mix on Serve The Servants, a regal, sombre All Apologies and a Dumb shorn of almost all of its cello and even more isolated as a result. The whole thing sounds grubby and glorious.
Also slotted inside this new offering are a treasure trove of demos, alternate takes, hand-written lyric sheets, a wonderful letter from Albini to the band prior to recording and an important note from comedian Bobcat Goldthwait that highlights the humour that’s so integral to the band, yet so readily overlooked by many.
What we have here is a colossus, an album that deserves its own place in history a couple of doors down from ‘Nevermind’, a record that it couldn’t be more different to but a record that it wouldn’t exist without. If this does prove to be the last word we ever hear from Nirvana, then there can be no complaints. ‘In Utero’ is everything it once was: conflicted, beguiling and fucking brilliant.
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