Nirvana CD

IN UTERO was nominated for a 1994 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

"All Apologies" was nominated for 1995 Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal and for Best Rock Song.

"Teenage angst has paid off well," growls Kurt Cobain on IN UTERO's opening fusilade, "Serve The Servants," suggesting that perhaps success has spoiled Nirvana. Not! IN UTERO is a howling, defiantly punkish recording, an unsentimental throwback to an era of garage band epiphanies and raw, unadorned rock and roll. On IN UTERO, Nirvana rails against both "alternative" conformity and polished notions of commercial rock with the anthemic rage of true outcasts.

Engineer-producer Steve Albini has enabled Nirvana to replicate the savage immediacy of their live sound--the sound of a band without commercial aspirations or pretensions, just thrashing away for the sheer joy of noise. Drummer Dave Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic play with heroic power as guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Kurt Cobain overlays their growling beat with shards of broken glass and shattered dreams.

On "Scentless Apprentice" each Cobain power chord is tempered by a series of calculated dissonances and melodic fragments, while the singer bares his vulnerability and anger through Nirvana's familiar soft-hard-soft-hard structures on "Heart Shaped Box" and "Rape Me." Through his crunching guitar and elliptical lyrics on various diseases and recoveries, Cobain lays bare the turmoil and resentments, the physical and mental ailments (self-inflicted and otherwise) that have colored Nirvana's notoriety. Instead of celebrating their success, Nirvana have fashioned a powerful cautionary tale on IN UTERO, to wit: that fame, acclaim and wealth are not liberating; that music like this cannot be produced on an assembly line, then be used once and tossed on a scrap heap; that life and music was a lot more fun when they were back playing for an audience of nine in some grungy club. IN UTERO is too strong and honest to ignore.

A Nirvana best-of that includes a previously unheard song; how much more of a no-brainer could you want? Admittedly, the trio that defined grunge--not to mention its contemporaneous generation of X'ers--wasn't around long enough to work up that extensive a discography. Still, who wouldn't relish the opportunity to have some of Nirvana's greatest tracks together on one disc (yes, completists, even the rarities collection INCESTICIDE ("Sliver") and the pre-fame album BLEACH ("About A Girl") are represented. And of course, such whisper-to-a-scream classics as "Lithium," "Come As You Are" and the ubiquitous, epochal "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are here.

Things quiet down a touch on the UNPLUGGED tracks (David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World, the IN UTERO hit "All Apologies"), but the intensity doesn't lessen a single iota. "Wait," we hear you cry, "what about that chilling live rendition of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" or NEVERMIND's haunting closer (hidden track aside) "Something In The Way?" You'll just have to wait for Vol. II (Courtney, are you listening?). By the way, the "new" track "You Know You're Right" is great, if not exactly revelatory.

Includes liner notes by David Fricke.

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

Nirvana: Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar); Dave Grohl (vocals, drums); Krist Novoselic (bass).

Personnel: Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar); Dave Grohl (vocals, drums); Pat Smear (guitar); Lori Goldston (cello); Dan Peters, Chad Channing (drums).

Audio Mixers: Jack Endino; Adam Kasper; Andy Wallace; Scott Litt; Steve Albini; Steve Fisk.

Liner Note Author: David Fricke.

Recording information: Robert Lang Studio.

Photographers: Redferns; Corbis Bettman; Frank Ockenfels; Frank Micelotta; Hugo Dixon; Charles Peterson .

Nirvana: Kurt Cobain (vocals, guitar); Kris Novoselic (bass); Dave Grohl (drums).

Additional personnel: Kera Schaley (cello).

Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.53) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's."
Rolling Stone (9/16/93, p.63) - 4 1/2 Stars - Outstanding - "...Cobain essentially works according to one playbook, but it's a winner no matter how he runs it....IN UTERO is a lot of things--brilliant, corrosive, enraged and thoughtful, most of them all at once..."
Spin (5/01, p.109) - Ranked #13 in Spin's "50 Most Essential Punk Records".
Spin (9/99, p.126) - Ranked #18 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s."
Spin (10/93, p.99) - "...IN UTERO is as reckless as anything since Rocket From the Tombs went down in flames....it's not liberation but its absence that gets illuminated in Nirvana's songs....setting out to make the last punk album, [IN UTERO] sounds like the first one instead..."
Entertainment Weekly (12/31/93, p.115) - Ranked #5 in Entertainment Weekly's list of `The Best & Worst Records Of 1993' - "...In unleashed wails that truly sound like someone giving birth, Cobain does more than wrestle his demons in public--he strangles them...."
Entertainment Weekly (9/24/93, p.90) - "...IN UTERO makes it clear that the trio now has a signature sound ready for the patent office....Cobain writes terrifically punchy songs and [the band] ravages them into beautiful, brutalizing clatter..." - Rating: B+
Entertainment Weekly (11/8/02, p.107) - "...By the end, you'll be happy to have relived the band's glories..." - Rating: A
Q (7/01, p.90) - Included in Q's "50 Heaviest Albums of All Time".
Q (10/01, p.73) - Ranked #20 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime"
Q (12/99, p.76) - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s."
Q (1/94, p.82) - Included in Q's list of `The 50 Best Albums Of 1993' - "...a mature, progressive, marvelous new record..."
Q (10/93, p.114) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...[IN UTERO's] songs confirm Cobain's genius with a tune....If this is how Cobain is going to develop, the future is lighthouse-bright..."
Q (12/02, p.118) - 5 out of 5 - "...These songs get into your head....Nirvana's songs were smart and literate in a way that did anything but preclude mass appeal..."
Uncut (01/03, p.136) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...The good - and surprising - news about Nirvana is how well these 15 songs stand up....There's nothing to fault here musically..."
Melody Maker (1/1/94, p.77) - Ranked #26 in Melody Maker's list of the `Albums Of The Year' for 1993.
Melody Maker (9/4/93, p.31) - "...the history of the last two fraught years weighs mighty heavily upon IN UTERO....it occupies a middle ground between the metal-edged, scum-punk spite of BLEACH and the 10-million selling, grunge-with-gloss killer that was NEVERMIND..."
Musician (10/93, p.88) - "...IN UTERO is a living, breathing, crapping beast of a record that eats expectations for breakfast..."
Village Voice (3/94, p.5) - Ranked #2 in the Village Voice's 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Mojo (Publisher) (p.66) - Ranked #13 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "[U]ncompromising, uncomfortable, exhilarating art."
Mojo (Publisher) (3/03, p.76) - Ranked #40 in Mojo's "Top 50 Punk Albums" - "...Cobain's voice is frightening, like Rotten 17 years on..."
Mojo (Publisher) (12/02, p.99) - "...Worth it for 'You Know You're Right' alone..."
New York Times (Publisher) (9/19/93) - "...IN UTERO nearly topples under the weight of contempt and vitriol....there is a clear authorial voice on [the album] detailing a life in transition....Mr. Cobain [has been] turned nearly nihilistic by good fortune..."
NME (Magazine) (8/12/00, p.28) - Ranked #4 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums".
NME (Magazine) (12/25/93, p.67) - Ranked #30 in New Musical Express' list of `The Top 50 LPs Of 1993' - "...this attempt to re-invent the Seattle-ites as an unknown, low-fi punk group was doomed--Kurt Cobain's sense of melody was just too strong to be drowned in dissonance and noise...."
NME (Magazine) (9/4/93, p.31) - "...IN UTERO is a profoundly confused record...neither totally a self-destructive squall of hardcore nihilism...nor NEVERMIND II....As a document of a mind in flux, Kurt should be proud of it..."