Consider this less a personal reflection and more of a necessary acknowledgement.
It’s been pretty difficult not to hear word, even if you’re not really much of a Nirvana fan, of the upcoming twentieth anniversary reissue of the group’s final, and indeed finest, album In Utero. It’s a record that has meant so much to so many people, both as fans and future musicians, that to try and ignore its place in the building of the contemporary musical landscape would be unwise in the extreme.
It’s a record that deliberately scratches away at preconceived notions of what a mainstream rock album should sound like, in stark contrast to its predecessor Nevermind. If their 1991 breakthrough was essentially shiny alt-rock at its most palatable then In Utero is alt-rock trying its hardest not to fall into the same trap. For all the talk about whether the original Steve Albini mixes were more extreme, which I for one am sure they were, there’s little denying that an album that opens with the lo-fi dirge ‘Serve the Servants’ and the rampant ‘Scentless Apprentice’, and closes with the droning outro to 'All Apologies’, is pretty far from what makes traditionally radio-friendly rock music.
Nirvana didn’t have to do this. It made their lives considerably more difficult, but as a reaction to Kurt Cobain’s backtracking over the sound of Nevermind (which only really occurred after that record had made him one of the most recognisable figures in popular music) it was perhaps as much inevitable as anything else. If Nevermind is the album that nominally, if not necessarily factually, brought the alternative to a mainstream audience then In Utero is the album that introduced a mainstream audience to something genuinely alternative.
The fact that the record still sounds as potent today is testament more to Cobain’s songwriting than anything else however. He may have famously preached his devotion to R. E. M. and Shonen Knife, but let’s not forget that this is a man who was also a fan of bands like Scratch Acid and Swans. He was no stranger to harsh, difficult music, something which shows on In Utero. The difference between Cobain and so many others, however, was his ability to write harsh and difficult pop songs, and to a standard few others have matched since.
Whilst it would be easy to sit back and claim that this is a record that has had its influence vastly overstated by legions of critics in the years since its release, in fact it’s nigh on impossible to do so seriously. In Utero is one of those rare records that helps to define not only the generation of musicians its creators were part of, but also several generations to follow. Whatever you think of the economics behind the new reissue, this is as good a time as any to salute a record without which many of us probably wouldn’t even be listening to most of the music we love today.
