Notes From The Record Room: As In Utero Spins…
Journal entry: Friday evening, September 22nd, 2023…
I’m bent over a laptop tapping away, two fingers of room temperature whiskey unsettled thanks to the quick sip I just took. My back hurts and I’m bending my neck upwards so I can see because my progressive lenses are out of date. I have an eye appointment next week. I’ve recently had to exchange my go-to Vans for a pair of walking sneakers. And there’s a CD copy of Nirvana’s In Utero to my right, the light of the nearby lamp reflected on the jewel case, revealing a topography of light scratches and surface abrasions. I bought this CD when I was 16 years old. At the time, I thought there would be more albums to follow from Nirvana. Those of my ilk likely thought the same, but the band’s story ended with this album. You may know why.
Nirvana’s In Utero was released September 21st, 1993. The album celebrated thirty years yesterday. I’m far removed from where I was when I heard “teenage angst has paid off well” and well into “now I’m bored and old”. This is why I typically avoid nostalgia. It’s rarely a good scene once I’ve set course for memory lane.
This CD is bored and old.
For a long time, In Utero was an album I’d rarely visit. Only two years before, Nirvana’s commercial breakthrough Nevermind introduced me to my generation, extracting me from the safety of Top 40, the neon-highlighted glitz and banal excesses of hair metal, and my father’s 60s-leaning record collection. Truth be told I was already slowly moving toward punk rock anyway having discovered a love for skateboarding and acquiring a repro-of-a-repro-of-a-repro copy of Dead Kennedys’ Bedtime For Democracy, which had soundtracked a few early morning walks to the bus stop via Walkman. Nevermind was my call to jump from whatever precipice I was still clinging to for the sake of comfort.
In Utero, however…
The Beatles open “Hard Day’s Night” with a chord, an iconic sound left to dangle and reverberate for a few seconds before the band launches into the opening verse of the song. As the song plays during the beginning few minutes of the accompanying film, you watch The Beatles comedically evade stampeding fans. “Serve The Servants” opens with similar resolve, Kurt Cobain acting as fame’s attempted escapee, trying to flee his own personal stampede.
He awaits the count and go… The thesis statement is delivered.
It’s loud. It’s abrasive without being alienating. It’s not “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Those who expected Nevermind (Again) may have been disappointed. I was not. In fact, I was elated from the moment that chord was struck.
MTV had already prepped us a little bit before In Utero’s proper release date. The video for “Heart-Shaped Box” had aired in late August, exhibiting a noticeable shift in tone. Still relatively anthemic, but nowhere close to the rally cry that was “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Heart Shaped Box” carried the familiar metaphor-addled quiet-loud-quiet motif and brought an air of post-fame disillusionment. My mom saw the video. I remember her walking into my bedroom while I was getting ready for school one morning specifically to let me know how angry she was at how Christ had been depicted—a gaunt and decrepit man, crucified with a Santa cap on his head—as if I had anything to do with it. I found the effort strange, some onus placed upon me as if I was supposed to reject any perceived iconoclasm or blasphemy from a band whose music I enjoyed. Seemed odd coming from someone who lived through John Lennon’s “bigger than Jesus” gaffe as a child, those comments having ignited with knee-jerk immediacy many a bonfire, LPs and Beatles-branded merchandise left to melt and burn in honor of Jesus Christ.
When I mentioned that Nirvana’s mainstream leap introduced me to my generation, I was not being hyperbolic. Cobain may have been shy about a lot, but he wasn’t when it came to his influences and I was happy to seek out what I could once that information was obtained. During the two-year gap between Nevermind and In Utero, I’d grown more familiar with punk and indie and kept up with the new sounds informing MTV’s buzz bin. In Utero was intended to be Nirvana’s closest recorded approximation of Cobain’s influences and the decision to have Steve Albini record the album made inference that In Utero would be the anti-pop album Nirvana promised.
In Utero introduced me to Steve Albini, the ex-frontman of the notorious Big Black and producer of some notable indie touchstones like Surfer Rosa by Pixies, Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey, Pod by The Breeders, and a number of Touch & Go releases by The Jesus Lizard, The Didjits, Slint, not to mention his own albums with Big Black. At the time, I hadn’t heard many of these albums and had no knowledge of Albini or his reputation as a caustic wit with ties to the pre-Nirvana indie rock maelstrom that thrived thanks to college radio, zine culture, and DIY gigs and record labels. There were suddenly more bands to check out and CDs to track down.
Steve Albini’s original mix of In Utero was issued for the album’s 20th anniversary as the “2013 Mix”.
When “Scentless Apprentice” first met my ears following “Serve The Servants”, its heavy kick drum intro and subsequent rush of noise-rocked rambunctia dialing up the album’s intensity, confirmation that the Albini factor was enabling the band to indulge in some of their noisier indie rock proclivities seemed evident. But for all the talk of how much In Utero would be the ear-rattling opposite of its predecessor, I was honestly expecting more tracks to sound like “Scentless Apprentice”. “Milk It” was another splintering inclusion and “tourette’s”, albeit the album’s true throwaway, was also a potential ear-bleeder. Otherwise, I thought Nirvana’s Incesticide compilation contained more esoteric and challenging material, tracks like “Hairspray Queen”, “Beeswax”, and “Mexican Seafood” the complete antithesis to Nevermind’s fuzz-pop. Even “Aero Zeppelin”, whose title was meant as a humorous, parodic dig aimed at arena-sized Boomer rock, was free of polish and full of throat.
That said, though, In Utero would ultimately serve as Nirvana’s truest conveyance of identity. While Albini’s mix of the album was famously altered thanks to being met with some resistance from the big tops at Geffen, (Scott Litt would eventually remix album singles “Heart-Shaped Box”, “All Apologies”, and a version of “Pennyroyal Tea” that wasn’t included on the album), In Utero succeeded in sounding different enough from Nevermind to evade accusations of retread while also retaining some of the band’s hook-centric strengths. Songs like “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle”, “Very Ape”, and “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” do a great job of balancing noise with a viable sense of melody while “Dumb”, “Pennyroyal Tea”, and “All Apologies” act as cool off points left with enough space to build out bowed instrumentation and nicely rendered moments of reflection and audible pain.
The provocatively titled “Rape Me” is really the only song that hasn’t aged well for me, its intro riff similar enough to that of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that it comes across as more of a “Same Bag O’ Tricks" track next to the material that it’s sandwiched by. I almost wish “I Hate Myself And Want To Die” had been included instead.
For me In Utero is a grieve record. There was a feeling back then when I felt inextricably tied to youth and ownership of my generation’s music, music that I fell in love with and connected to so easily. It’s a feeling that I’ve admittedly romanticized to some impossible degree as I’ve gotten older, so much so that I continue to chase it with every new album I acquire or song I hear. Nothing I listen to now compares to the music I heard back then. And it’s not a matter of quality: I’m far from a generational snob. Every time I get to the end of “All Apologies”, Cobain repeating the phrase “All in all is all we are” till the music stops, I relive some sense of finality and am met with longing to relive those days. Or, relive the experience of hearing the music of my generation when it was new, back when I was a relevant participant and not a Gen X relic looking back thanks to yet another multi-decade anniversary passing me by.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
