Prove Your Greatness: Nirvana

I have always admired Nirvana, but to me their music has been associated with a specific time and place. I was eleven when Nevermind exploded -- I first saw the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video on a Saturday morning Nickelodeon variety show. I dutifully ordered the album via the BMG record service (with seven others for a pretty penny) and wore it out. I tried to like In Utero, but could rarely survive longer than "Rape Me." Kurt Cobain shot himself when I was in eighth grade. I remember my friends acting shocked and saddened, but we were too young to fathom what had happened. MTV Unplugged in New York dropped when I was in high school. By then I had long moved on, but Unplugged became on obsession. I used to play it before going to bed. The album made me feel deeply sad and safe at once, much like R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People. That was no coincidence.

Since then I've listened very little to Nirvana's music. It just seemed too familiar, and I could never separate it from time and place. Now comes the release of Nirvana's much-bootlegged 1992 Reading Festival performance. I've been listening to in on repeat since I bought it on Tuesday. It is a revelation.

Live at Reading reveals the band not only at full-peak, but rambunctious and almost gleefully in control of their power. The material spans Bleach to a few early versions of songs from In Utero, with a couple of choice b-sides and covers thrown in. So in essence, it spans their entire career. Unlike the surprisingly inert live compilation From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, these live versions seem definitive. Moreover, they recast the band's music and provide a freshness an album listen can't.

I've now gone back and re-listened to all of Nirvana's records, and only now do I understand the band's legacy. The best songs are incredible, the average songs are great, and there really aren't any bad songs (at lease not beginning with Nevermind). So here I present a quick album by album reassessment, including the b-side collection Incesticide and Unplugged in New York.

Bleach

Bleach is not a landmark first record. Like Radiohead's Pablo Honey, it's a slight album that has really good moments. "School," "About a Girl," "Negative Creep," and "Blew" are as good as anything off of Nevermind. The rest of the album merely points to what the band would achieve with their next record.

Nevermind

It's common to hear music snobs grumble about Nevermind's shiny production. Yet Butch Vig's production tempers the fuzz of Cobain's guitar, making Nevermind almost a really hard power pop record. Approached from that perspective, Nevermind is a triumph. What's most striking is the beauty of the songs' melodies. Cobain wrote lovely music, amplified. (This becomes most obvious on Unplugged, where the songs are de-amplified.)

Incesticide

Incesticide is a wonderful mixed-bag of b-sides and covers. It shows Nirvana's playful side, which is largely absent from their proper albums. "Sliver," "Been a Son," and "Aneurysm" are awesome, and it's a little surprising that they never made the cut. There are a few Vaselines covers that punch up what were twee numbers in the Vaselines' hands. The rest of the material is what you would expect of outtakes: interesting curios that deserve to be heard.

In Utero

In Utero has aged well, and it's aforementioned "difficulty" has softened a bit for me. Except for a couple of the squawking later tracks, the album is roundly fantastic. However, Steve Albini's production is as stark as ever, making it a bracing listening experience. Notably, "Heart Shaped Box" and "All Apologies," the album's two best tracks, were remixed by Scott Litt (R.E.M.'s go-to for almost a decade). They are also the album's best-sounding tracks. Still, of Nirvana's three studio albums, In Utero remains their most powerful and exciting.

MTV Unplugged in New York

This is still my favorite Nirvana record, and it may be their best. Half of the tracks are covers, and they are what make the album shine. Nirvana's version of each of the six cover songs is better than the original. That these versions were all performed live is a bit remarkable. As for their own songs, "All Apologies" is even more heartbreaking, while "Dumb" works much better as an acoustic track. And then there's the Lead Belly cover "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," a song so wrenching that I still catch my breath at its howling climax. This is not a live album; it is the acoustic record Nirvana was always meant to make.

Prove Your Greatness: A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector by Various Artists

The first half of Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time features all of the usual suspects: the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, Springsteen, Led Zeppelin--check, check, check, check, check. Scrolling through the list, you begin to wonder if RS was just going through the motions. That is, until you reach the entry for 142. Wait. What? Did they seriously just put a Christmas record on their list? Ahead of classics like Paul's Boutique, Houses of the Holy, and Murmur? Well yes, and for good reason.

A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector consolidates the best of Spector's Wall of Sound--those drums!, those 500 background vocalists!, those endless tracks of music layered on top of each other!--and stuffs it all under a Christmas tree. Hell, the mere fact that Spector and his artists make you want to listen to a bunch of holiday songs is an achievement enough. But Christmas Gift goes further by featuring some of the most exuberant and giddy music ever recorded. It also features some definitive performances of the most popular music ever: The Ronnettes' "Sleigh Ride," The Crystals' "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," Darlene Love's incredible original track "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." Most importantly, Christmas Gift inspired one of the greatest contemporary Christmas songs, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You." For that I say: "thank you, Phil."

Sure, this is not music you'll be listening to in July (for that you have Spector's Back to Mono set, which includes Christmas Gift) But in December, when you have to listen to this stuff, why not listen to the best?

Prove Your Greatness: The Score by The Fugees

Allmusic describes Alternative Rap as a genre of music whose practitioners "refuse to conform to any traditional stereotypes of rap...." They often "blur genres, drawing equally from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul, reggae, and even folk." The entry goes on to note that "most alternative rap groups are embraced primarily by alternative rock fans, not hip-hop or pop audiences." That seems like an apt description to me. I am not a member of the hip-hop audience, but have long admired the most successful Alternative Rap album of the 1990s: the Fugees' second album, The Score.

With its witty rhymes, left-field samples (read: the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin"), and "socially conscious" theme, The Score was out of step with the mainstream gangsta rap of 1996. It still became a massive success, thanks, in part, to its superlative singles "Fu-Gee-La," "Ready or Not," and (the, at the time, inescapable) "Killing Me Softly." After its release, anticipation was high for a follow-up that, ultimately, never came. Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill went on to release their own records that established them as superstar solo artists, while Pras Michel went on to do soundtrack and production work.

The Score is not a concept album, but it plays like one. For one, it's repeatedly self-referential: it begins with an intro that incorporates all of the song titles and themes of the album; the mid-album title track is a pastiche of samples from the record. The short sketches that begin each track further unify the record, giving it an almost cinematic feel. (Of course, the Fugees go out of their way to invoke the movies. The album alludes to a number of films, most frequently The Godfather.) Taken as a whole, The Score comes off as an album about the rap genre: its subjects (inner-city life, racism, police brutality), its myth and facade ("Cowboys" and "The Mask"), and its members ("How Many Mics" and "Ready or Not").

On second listening, the album still holds up for two reasons: hooks and rhymes. In many ways, The Score is a spiritual successor to the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. The songs on both records are hook-laden, and the best hooks are stolen. But the Fugees have impeccable taste. And, like the Beasties, their theft spans disparate genres. Their rhymes, on the other hand, are as original as their hooks are borrowed. They are smart, biting, and often funny. Unfortunately, they are also riddled with topical references that sound dated to modern ears (sorry, Newt).

For as good as it is, elements of The Score can sometimes grate. The chorus of "The Beast," for example, has Jean using his voice to imitate (what I think is supposed to be) a police siren. It makes me want to skip ahead, but the raps on the song are so good that I usually stick with it. The nadir of the album is the cringe-worthy "Chinese Restaurant" sketch. What's so offensive is not the crude stereotypes it employs, but how unfunny and awkward it is.

The album is notable for featuring two sung cover versions, "Killing Me Softly" and "No Woman, No Cry." The former is still the revelatory showstopper it was in 1996. Even the strongest material on Hill's (overrated) solo album never topped it. The latter is a wholly unnecessary, but pleasant, cover of a song everyone already knows. But, a great song is a great song, and this one works as the penultimate track of the album.

The Score deserves its classic status by virtue of its singles, and the excellent album tracks "How Many Mics" and "Zealots." Even at its worst, the album comes off as it did 12 years ago: confident, smart, and tuneful.

Prove Your Greatness: Live Through This by Hole

This is the first entry in a series of posts that will take a second listen to the "Great Albums of Rock." One of the favorite pastimes of the music media (and, sometimes, the mainstream media) is to create lists of the "Greatest Albums of All Time." But are these albums really great, or did they secure their place by being Groundbreaking, or Important, or Difficult, yet now gather dust in the musicophile's collection? Is Janet Jackson's Velvet Rope really a better album than the Who's Quadrophenia, as Rolling Stone says it is? We'll see.

The first album is 1994's Live Through This by Hole. Does it still stand up? Does it deserve the plaudits it got when it was released?

In a word: yes. In two words: Oh yes.

It's easy to forget that Courtney Love is not just a Paris Hilton-style celebrity. She is, or at least was, a regular tabloid queen. But unlike America's favorite heiress, Love's artistic work exists alongside her gossip-rag antics. Sure, we know her because she was Kurt Cobain's wife (and then widow). But she, at least, has one masterpiece to justify the media attention surrounding her.

Live Through This was ecstatically received upon its arrival. Unlike many albums that are considered the masterpieces of the rock canon, it made its splash on entry, but didn't cause ripples. It was the the last gasp of grunge, a style of music that became unfashionable (at least with the critics) soon after its release (or, more accurately, after Cobain's death, which occurred four days after its release). So, unlike Beck's Odelay, Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted, or Radiohead's OK Computer, it was never borrowed from or replicated.

It's also an anachronism. Its lyrics verge on early-90s alt rock parody. Angst and self loathing abound. A sample lyric: "I'm Miss World, somebody kill me [...] No one cares, my friends." Its lyrical hostility can be off-putting and adolescent. Lyrically, Live Through This is also also a laundry list of third-wave feminist complaints: femininity, domesticity, motherhood, daughterhood, eating disorders, negative body image, marriage, broken relationships. (Was Love a Women's Studies major? You'd think so listening to the album.) They're all there, and they weigh down an otherwise excellent album.

Live Through This has one notable virtue, which lifts it aloft the above complaints and makes it compulsively listenable: its songs are incredible. They are gorgeous and furious, and almost always at the same time. This is the genius of the record. This loud soft loud, this melodicism with noise, this textural juxtaposition, is, of course, the trademark of the Pixies and Nirvana. But (here we go), as a woman, Love doesn't have to hold back on the plaintive splendor. She doesn't have to choose between "Landslide" and "Lithium," "Both Sides Now" and "Debaser." She can have both, and does.

Yes, it's beautiful, but the second half of the equation is that Live Through This is also immensely cathartic. Listen to "Softer, Softest," the album's greatest song. Halfway through, the sighing ballad climaxes into raging electric guitars and Love's screams. The listener's melancholy isn't alleviated, it is intensified and then emancipated. In this sense, the album can be compared to the works of two of Hole's contemporaries: PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney. But, for as great (or greater) as they are, they never struck the same balance of, what one critic once called, "rose and thorn." They can be beautiful, and they can be raging, but Live Through This is both at the same time without letting the seams show.

One measure of a classic album is the quality of its album tracks vis-à-vis its singles. On Live Through This the most famous singles, "Doll Parts" and "Violet," for as excellent as they are, don't match songs like "Asking for It" or "Plump." The latter hide their best elements in their refrains, asides that, on a lesser album, would have been broken off and made into their own songs. Here, they are part of what are already fine tunes. The best moments of Live Through This are in the interstices.

Live Through This succeeds because it has an embarrassment of riches: hooks, fury, melody, beauty. No, the album is not groundbreaking, important, or difficult. It's just damn great.