It’s with no little relief that many of us – journalists, especially – have greeted the three CDs and one DVD that comprise the long-awaited Nirvana box set, “With The Lights Out”. Here, at last, is something new to write about. For while the band’s critical and commercial stock has inexorably grown in the years since Kurt Cobain’s death, attempts to explain the band or speculate about the complex psychological state of the singer have become ever more desperate. In the absence of new ways to hear the same few dozen songs, hack after hack has been reduced to bypassing the music and grappling instead with what made Kurt tick. It’s been an undignified, rarely enlightening business.
“With The Lights Out”, though, stops us juggling thin theories about depression, drugs and wives, and concentrates our minds on the weighty musical legacy of Kurt Cobain. With 68 out of the 81 tracks previously unreleased, it doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know: Cobain and Krist Novoselic form Nirvana in the backwoods of Washington State, work their way through a succession of drummers, and smoothly develop a heavy metal-tinged punk formula (the first track, from their 1987 debut show, is a decent crack at Led Zep’s “Heartbreaker”) into something with melodic depth and accessibility.
But it’s the way “With The Lights Out” fleshes out the plot that makes it so compelling. From very early on, the intricacies of Kurt’s musical obsessions are revealed. A fantastic bunch of Leadbelly covers from the late ‘80s show that the 'Unplugged' cover of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” was not a late digression; he first essays the song in 1989. Acoustic demos of songs from “About A Girl” onwards give a glimpse of the raw craftsmanship of Cobain songs. Again and again, we’re shown that it’s churlish to dismiss the early Nirvana as a crude punk band. From the very beginning, the alchemical mix of influences that made the band so powerful are all there.
Plenty of the songs – especially the great swathes of solo demos – take the listener uncomfortably close to Cobain: a version of “All Apologies” is terribly intimate. But the enduring picture of the singer which emerges from “With The Lights Out” is of someone who found making music an exhilarating process as well as a cathartic one. Constantly, the brute thrill of Nirvana is reiterated: a buzzing but momentous version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, recorded on a tinny boombox in a rehearsal studio; “Pay To Play” from their first demo session with Butch Vig, a snarky alternate lyric to “Stay Away” that reveals Cobain’s corporate loathing was hardly an affectation picked up after fame arrived; an epic version of “Scentless Apprentice” that finds the trio spellbound by the power of one lurching, mud-spattered riff.
And while it’s convenient to see Kurt Cobain as permanently melancholic, it’s how he embraces dumb fun that is the most moving aspect of “With The Lights Out”. On an undated demo called “Beans”, he’s a helium-voiced dork, playing the lo-fi victim. And at the very end of the DVD, he’s there with the band in 1993 in a Rio De Janeiro studio, playing drums and ambling his way through Terry Jacks’ “Seasons In The Sun”. A song about imminent death, of course, it’s the sort of thing that Cobain’s amateur psychoanalysts will exploit for boundless tragic potential. But really, it’s just a guy in a band, f*cking around - quite a healthy way to remember this giant, enduring talent, all told.
by John Mulvey