In Utero [VINYL]

The album starts off perfectly, with Serve The Servants. On hearing this song, I knew that the album was going to be good. The first 5 songs are great, and although it slows down a bit, the pace is picked up again with the unbelievably emotional Pennyroyal Tea, continues with the ironic Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, tourette's and closes with a classic - All Apologies. It's almost as if Kurt is apologising to the mainstream for daring to be different, but thats all he could be - all in all is all we all are. The album is a classic, and should really be an essential purchase in everyone's record collection.

Whereas Nevermind contained what were basically 12 catchy pop-punk songs, albeit far more talented lyrically, In Utero is a torrent of emotion, anger, angst and melancholy. The opening track Serve the Servant is a thinly veiled attack, lines like 'I just want you to know dad, I don't hate you anymore' and 'I tried to hard to have a father but instead I had a dad', musically the song is a little poor but I think this is intended. 'Scentless Apprentice' is next and a fantastic simply, roaring punk song, yet if you listen closely aside from the crashing drums and vicious guitar riff there is a agonized, whining of feedback and high pitched squeal making the song very dark, Kurt's seemingly incoherent vocals adding to the doomy and abrasive feel of this song.

'Heart Shaped Box' is next and argurably one of the finest Nirvana songs, definetly the finest Video, after reading 'Heavier than Heaven' by Charles R Cross you can really understand this song a lot more. The song is lyrically a masterpiece with slightly disturbing lines such as 'Broken Hymen of your Highness' and 'I wish I could eat you're cancer, when you turn black', the meaning of this song, as with most of them, is open to debate, but it appears to be a love song. 'Rape Me' follows and though the 12 Year Olds may giggle at the title and Headmasters be offended by it, the song reeks of irony, I don't think it is a coincidence that a song, conceivably about how Kurt feels his music has been gutted by the Music industy, media and MTV has an almost identical riff to their MTV smash 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. The album continues with 'Frances farmer will Have Her Revenge on Seattle' the fifth track, showing more of the angry, abrasive but haunting ways in which the band manipulate their instruments and then moves onto real beauty in 'Dumb', this gorgeous, haunting song leaves a real mark and shows Kurt's fantastic ability to write beautiful music. This tranquility is crushed with the 'ccrrrckckk crr crccckck' of 'Very Ape' (Good impression no?), a punk song but (now i'm repeating myself) just slightly darker and more abrasive and this particular song doesn't seem to become stale as quickly as most 'Punk' tracks seem to. Then, showing a twisted sense of humour and with possible references to his relationship with either Courtney or his fans we crash headlong into 'Milk It', a thoroughly dark, inaccesible track that takes a lot of effort to really enjoy, and then real enjoyment when you actually can. Pennyroyal Tea is up next, which I consider the weakest track on the album, having heard the 'Unplugged' version first I was struck by how poor the In Utero version is, but still, for those of you who just want heavyness, this won't dissapoint.

'Radio Friendly Unit Shifter' appears to be an attack on the media, it includes extremely strange 'boink' noises and is generally and odd and innaccesible track. 'tourette's' follows and again shows Kurt's fantastic sense of humour, and a fantastic prophecy on what would follow his music, a song named after a syndrome that involves someone shouting very loud at every opportunity is simply 4 power chords repeated with screamed vocals, though this seems to be an obvious joke (for what purpose i'm not sure), nowadays this sort of thing is not only normal but taken completely serious with bands having decided to get rid of that convention of 'singing' and might we say 'talent' and scream their words into a microphone. 'All Apologies' finishes the album off in beautiful haunting style and would all the homophobic idiots who enjoy this band take note of the line 'What else could I say, everyone is gay' and kindly stop enjoying the music. Kurt's enviable outlook on life is something to be appreciated, in a time populated by Guns 'n Roses, Aerosmith and other macho, chauvinistic and outdated bands, Nirvana promoted tolerance and thoughtfulness and that has to be a good thing in any time.

So there it is, my review, hope you enjoyed it. In Utero is a masterpiece and far surpasses Nevermind, though many extremely talented bands used their talent to create melodic and pretty tunes, Nirvana uses it's unquestionable talent to create a hate and angst filled, dark, haunting and beautiful masterpiece. In many ways, this is the perfect way to remember Kurt, along with the Unplugged session, he was a man who was so talented and inspirational. The thousands of imitators can reproduce what they view as Nirvana: Slipknot may be angry, but it's forced and obvious, the legions of Pop- and Ska-Punk may try to make bare, catchy riffs, but it's bought and packaged, the rawness of this album is real, unpackaged and unprocessed yet never throws itself in your face. I will get down off my soapbox now, if you've read up to here, let me just say thank you.