Nirvana – Bleach

 

Nirvana, there’s no band quite like them. Age doesn’t wear these guys’ music thin. They still stack up against any rock band or underground band before or since. Maybe it was the sheer passion of Kurt Cobain conveyed in both his vocal delivery and to the bone direct song writing approach. Maybe it was also the directness of these songs, the power of simplicity with the bouncy bass and thunderous drums all serving the only frontman I can think of whose voice was primal scream therapy that could get on the radio. John Lennon could scream from the heart too, but he kept that to the outro of Mother and his avant garde Yoko collaborations. He didn’t do that through the whole of all of his songs. Nevermind, In Utero, Unplugged – next level rock music. But Bleach, a lot of people say Bleach was a band in development and it’s even been undermined by Cobain himself who claims he was merely trying to fit into the Seattle scene.

Well, let’s see if it isn’t something a little more.

01. Blew
There’s a 70’s feel on this track. This is a functional track 1, not my favourite on the LP but sets the tone.

02.  Floyd The Barber
This is a prototype for some of the more messed up stuff on In Utero. The drum and guitar riff playing in unison reminds me of Scentless Apprentice. Tense music at it’s best.

03. About a Girl
Shows the pop songwriting ability of Kurt Cobain. He himself said he held back this side of himself here to fit into the burgeoning Seattle scene. For all the talk of Cobain being ‘pure’ and ‘all about the music, man’ he played a calculated game to get to the top. He approached music with passion but also a concept of a new kind of music he wanted to make that wasn’t available at that time.

 04.School
For me, this is as good as some of the stuff on Nevermind. Vague lyrics but such a relatable topic. It could be about everything and nothing. ‘You’re in Highschool Again.’ That’s genius, that could be a job, a friendship group, a ‘scene’ of any kind really. Many think this track is about all the hip posturing Seattle bands Kurt felt uncomfortable to be around at the time.

05. Lovebuzz
Sexy dark grooves here. Great choice of a cover because the original song is unknown and sounds different. Nirvana played with simple dynamics again and again, so often going from noise to melody, from quiet to loud, from screams to conventional singing or talking. It’s astounding how much they made of such a simple toolkit. It puts a huge percentage of rock bands and musicians to shame. It even puts a lot of the ‘internet age’ music to shame where bands have millions of effects, tools, and programs at their disposal and seem to forget about songwriting or having a concept of what they even want to make.

06. Paper Cuts
It seems like they aren’t really at the races on this one. It does sound like the title of the album though, murky, and it’s difficult to see exactly what this is as a song. There’s a drum beat, some yelling that is extreme even for Cobain, but it’s missing something.

07. Negative Creep
The energy on display here coarses through you as you listen to it. Nirvana’s songs always make me feel something, a lot more times than they’re remembered for now, because of the suicide, the feeling is a childlike sense of fun. I feel like headbanging, like jumping around, like singing along. A lot of people accused them of ripping a line from Mudhoney as well as their style. Just look at this cover and then the cover of Bigmuff Superfuzz and you’d have to say they kind of did want to seem Mudhoneyesque. But Nirvana are so much more direct, Cobain’s vocals more powerful, the songs more hook based. Music has the power to transform. It shouldn’t be something that sits in the background while we drive around, eat or have conversations. Nirvana’s music jumps out at you and has so much life even now.

08. Scoff
Always enjoyed the frat feel of this one, ‘give me back my alcohol!’ This is an underrated track, has monolithic beats and a bacchanal sinister quality.

09. Swap Meet
There’s a time capsule quality to this. It takes me back to a time of there being ‘scenes’ all in the same city together. It’s hard not to romanticise. People say now we have the internet and the scene is the world itself. It just makes the experience of music so individual and makes it harder to connect over music. It also encourages elitism, and obsessive downloading over close listening. This music demands attention.

10. Mr. Moustache
This is an underwhelming track. I’ve listened to this LP numerous times and have struggled to recollect this track from memory. That’s usually a bad sign.

11. Sifting
Even though they refined their sound in every possible way on Nevermind, I also miss the playful feeling this album had here – flaws and all. A few tracks on Nevermind had that (Breed and Territorial Pissings) and those are my two favourite Nirvana tracks.

12. Big Cheese
A top tier track, particularly for Kurt’s vocal destruction and double tracked Beatleseque harmonies.

13. Downwer
This is the only track that I feel they’re trying to be like a band they aren’t truly. That style of talk singing doesn’t suit Kurt, it sounds vaguely like a Big Black song to me.

Primal music, it bludgeons you with its riffs, even without Grohl the drums are monolithic, and Kurt’s possessed screams are unmatched today despite hundreds of imitators. Track for track it’s weaker than their other albums, but this is their most playful and energetic album. Of all the phases of Nirvana this is the time period I’d most like to be in the band, there’s a bacchanal dark energy in this music transcending both time and the tragic story of the band’s later years.