Nevermind (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) [Double CD]

Given the album's standing in the rock firmament, it's only right that its 20th anniversary is marked with a lavish repackaging, and sure enough a four-CD-and-one-DVD set has been assembled. Also available is a smaller, double-disc release, featuring the original album (plus a spread of B sides from its singles, and live versions of non-Nevermind tracks Sliver, Been a Son and School) alongside a collection of cuts from the band's Smart Sessions - when Chad Channing was still their drummer - and a number of ear-piercing rehearsal takes taped directly onto a boombox. This 'Demos and Sessions' disc is also part of the larger package.

The Smart Sessions are of particular interest - it was these recordings, made in Wisconsin with Nevermind producer Butch Vig at the desk, which attracted the attention of DGC, a label with the financial power to buy the band out of its Sub Pop contract. Encouraged by Sonic Youth, the label did so and the rest (as they say) is history. Channing's drumming on the takes isn't up to the standard Dave Grohl would later exhibit - but it's not so bad that the band would have suffered for his continued employment. One wonders how far Cobain and bandmate Krist Novoselic had to distance themselves from the drummer before he got the message. Non-LP tracks are here, too, with previously unreleased recordings of Sappy and Breed when it was still titled Immodium (sic) included. The boombox versions will be familiar to anyone who owns the With the Lights Out boxset of 2004 - awful on the ears, they're guides for the band foremost, and a nuisance for anyone else with a respect of fidelity. Whatever's lower than lo-fi, it never stoops further than this.

A full live set fills one of the remaining discs, recorded live at the Paramount Theatre, Seattle for Halloween 1992. This also makes up the DVD (certain clips were taken from the performance for the band's 1994 video, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!), along with the iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit music video and those for the rest of Nevermind's singles. And the final CD is home to perhaps the most fascinating tracks: 'Devonshire Mixes' of Nevermind, running in the order of the final album, albeit without Polly and Endless Nameless. Butch Vig put these together as the album was coming together, so they're as much his vision as the band's - which, to fans, will be welcomed after Andy Wallace's heavy-handed mixing of Nevermind wiped clean some of its rawness. Cobain famously called the end product, despite his choosing of Wallace for the job, "closer to a M�tley Cr�e record than a punk record".

Wallace would be vindicated by sales figures, of course. And Cobain and company would, for a while, be the biggest band in the world, as Nevermind conquered the Billboard Chart and then the hearts and minds of teenagers (and those who were still young enough at heart) worldwide. That it all came crumbling apart is, of course, a crying shame; but in these songs there are hopes and dreams, fire and desire. Cobain might have been portayed as a woe-is-me type; but many of his songs here are as bright as any successful pop record of the past 40 years. His pop-loving child inside ensured that the hard-edged punk-rocker he'd grown into never lost sight of a catchy melody or a winning hook, and it's because of this, and Wallace's gloss, that Nirvana made it. But, should you be keen to pick your way through the evolutionary process of one of rock's greatest ever long-players, hearing every fuzzy demo and work-in-progress chorus, now you've the chance like never before.

--Mike Diver

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