Published on Nov 7, 1997
How do you follow up one of the biggest breakthroughs in rock
music?
For Nirvana, the answer was to clean out the closets (and
potentially ruin any future box-set plans) from their Sub Pop days
to the outtakes from their 1991 smash
Nevermind.
The end result,
Incesticide, is spotty at times, but it also shows how good
this band could be at times.
This album covers almost every single lineup that Nirvana ever
had (although there isn’t a lot of detail about them on the liner
notes, and I forgot to take notes when I was researching this album
on the Nirvana fan sites). It’s a pretty good balance of their
brief history as a band, though it’s also pretty easy to tell which
songs are the older ones.
Kicking off with an outtake from the
Nevermind sessions, one wonders why Kurt Cobain and crew
chose to leave “Dive” off of
Nevermind. The song rocks just as hard as “Smells Like Teen
Spirit,” and is a wonderful way to start things off.
In fact, the whole first half of
Incesticide is one incredible trip. From the child’s-eye
view of one’s parents going out and leaving them with the
grandparents (“Sliver”) to the balls-out rockers (“Stain”, “Been A
Son”) to the covers (“Son Of A Gun,” “Turnaround,” “Molly’s Lips”),
the energy level is continually pushed to 11 with hardly any time
allowed to rest your neck from snapping back and forth. “Been A
Son,” which was featured as a live b-side on (I think) the
“Lithium” single, is even better here in the version from a BBC
Radio session.
Even some of the older material is killer. “Downer” is a
powerful adrenalin shot with Cobain reciting most of the lyrics,
while “Aero Zeppelin” is one hell of a song to experience and bang
one’s head to. The buildup from opening noted to bridge to the
thundering chorus servfed as proof that Nirvana was quickly going
to be a household name, and is one of my favorite songs on
Incesticide.
A few other moments on
Incesticide just don’t light any fires for me – and if
long-time readers remember my review of
Bleach some months ago, they won’t be surprised to find out
that it was a few of the older songs that let me down. I can barely
stand the nail-on-a-chalkboard vocal style that Cobain uses on
“Hairspray Queen,” and I just can’t get into “Beeswax” no matter
how many times I listen to the tape. One song that has grown on me
over time has been “Big Long Now,” which served as proof that
Nirvana could be powerful even on the slow songs.
To the diehard fan who would spend every penny they had on
anything with the Nirvana name, some of the 15 songs on
Incesticide will sound real familiar – especially if they
dropped top dollar for the import-only mini-album
Hormoaning. (To be fair, I prefer the uncensored version of
“Aneurysm” on
Hormoaning, but the version here is almost as good.) Trivia
question:
besides
the alternate version of “Aneurysm,” what songs on
Hormoaning did not make it onto
Incesticide?
E-mail me with your
answer. (C’mon, gang, this one’s an easy question.)
Releasing such a compilation album on the heels of
Nevermind‘s success was a risky move, both for Nirvana and
DGC Records. One could have argued that Nirvana was creatively
dried up if they couldn’t release an album of new material instead.
(I won’t even begin to talk about what I think of
In Utero here.) Fortunately for all parties involved, the
end product was a great album, and the gamble paid off.
Incesticide is more of a historical portrait than a
closet-cleaner release or even a bridge-gap album. It was a
collection of snapshots of where Nirvana had been and where they
were going…. and is one that is definitely worth checking
out.