Nirvana

MTV Unplugged in New York [live]

There may be better acoustic live albums out there, but not

Review Score:

(10/10)
many. If MTV did a better unplugged album I'd like to hear it. I used to dislike Nirvana not so much for the music as for the hype. To me buying their albums or even liking them was a guilty pleasure because they were freaking everywhere, much like U2 during the Joshua Tree days. I just couldn't get beyond the hype to enjoy the music and had them pegged as a teenybopper MTV band. How can they be any good, they're popular? Until this unplugged album came out that is. I stopped feeling guilty about liking them. Damn, these boys can play. This acoustic album by Nirvana is one of best things they ever did. For this show Nirvana expanded the band by adding Pat Smear, ex of the seminal LA punk band the Germs and a cello player whose name I can't remember. Pat had been used for some time to augment the band live but this was the first time I heard him actually play with Nirvana. He fleshes out the sound well. In fact I gained respect for Cobain and company for actually knowing who he was let alone hiring him. Then again Dave Grohl used to be in Scream so I shouldn't have been that suprised.

That many of these songs are covers is true, but the choice of covers serves to illuminate Nirvana's knowledge of music and their good taste. I love the Meat Puppets covers and that the Kirkwood brothers acutally came out on stage and played on them. How cool is that? The Man Who Sold The World from David Bowies' second album of the same name is full of emotion and rivals the original. Great cello on that one. The Vaselines cover and the fantastic reworking of the traditional folk song In the Pines are both emotionally over the top without resorting any rock star posturing. They just played the songs. I used to think these guys were slight metal punk popsters, nope, turns out they were acutally musicians who cared about the past history of their artform as well as its future. Damn, go figure that they were popular because they were good rather than just because they were marketed well.

Even though the set is in general relaxed, there is a palpable tension in Kurts' singing, an emotion that doesn't wallop you over the head with anger but rather slowly comes to a boiling point. Much of this album has a heartfelt, sad or genuine quality to it. Its honest, unpretentious and uncluttered. I'd recommend this album to Neil Young fans as well as Nirvana fans. Kurts' voice reminds me a bit of Neils in that neither one were very good singers per se, but could get a listener to feel what they were singing unlike few others. This is a great album.

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