Just sharing reading material for those that interested.

http://www.stereogum.com/1472551/in-utero-turns-20/franchises/the-anniversary/

Sep 13th '13 by Tom Breihan @ 9:31am

http://cdn.stereogum.com/files/2013/09/Nirvana-In-Utero-608x601.jpg

If you were a music-dork kid in 1993, the kind who read music-magazine articles about albums that wouldn’t come out for months, you were basically expecting Nirvana, one of the most popular bands in the world, to release a Wolf Eyes record. If you believed the magazines, which I absolutely did, then Kurt Cobain, so sick of the surprise fame that had been dropped into his lap two years earlier, was about to react to it by mangling ears everywhere, by making a record so sickening and abrasive that his own label was refusing to release it. There were all sorts of stories about mixdowns and single-choices and songwriting level, ideas that I didn’t understand, but they basically amounted to this: Cobain was going to make damn god and sure that he’d never have to set foot in the MTV Beach House. He’d hired Steve Albini, a glowering and vaguely terrifying figure, to produce the album. (I really only knew of him because of PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me, which was the loudest and most damaging music I’d ever heard at that point.) He’d refused to let his label hear any of it. The business people were panicking. If this was all hype, then it was masterfully executed hype, since In Utero ended up as the first album I ever bought on its release date.

History has shown that it wasn’t hype; there was real tension among the band and its handlers and Albini about the album, which ended up going through a few different mixes and which had a few different people’s fingerprints on it by the end. Still, I can’t imagine there was ever a point when DGC was going to scrap the album. Nirvana wasn’t U2 levels of big in 1993, and even Pearl Jam had come to eclipse their popularity, but their world-shattering stardom was a very real thing. Nevermind had come out of nowhere, captured the popular imagination, and resulted in an unprecedented major-label signing spree. For a while there, it felt like every time Cobain mentioned a favorite band’s name in an interview — something he did often — that same band would get a major-label contract a week later, regardless of marketability. The Melvins had a major deal. So did Unsane. So did Flipper, whose frontman had died five years earlier. It was nuts. Nirvana was a big deal; their songs were inescapable, their public stunts were the stuff of immediate legend (the Novoselic VMA bass-toss!), and bad approximations of Cobain’s haircut ruined a few million yearbook photos. The idea of a Nevermind follow-up was a high-pressure situation commercially. And the pressure was even higher artistically, since Cobain was the type who felt that he had to encapsulate the entire scene that birthed him, to stay true to underground ideals that barely exist anymore, now that he suddenly had this huge platform.

Amazingly, he succeeded. In Utero was, and is, one hell of a rock record, and I’d say I like it more than either of Nirvana’s other two studio albums. Albini’s production job maybe wasn’t the noise apocalypse that the press had led me to expect, but it was raw and thrilling. Its fuzz-roars and feedback-peals sounded wild and unencumbered without being self-consciously alienating. And even though Albini didn’t like the mixing job, it’s exactly what the album needed. Dave Grohl, a truly thunderous drummer, has never sounded heavier than he did on this album — the “Scentless Apprentice” intro alone, my god. Cobain’s voice was so strained and scraped and powerful, the sort of thing that would’ve worked amazingly in any context. And Albini had the right idea by recording them all in a room together and using minimal overdubs; it allowed them to sound like an actual band, like an old-school Cream-style power-trio. Even the most punishing tracks have their hooks, and whoever sequenced the album (Cobain, I guess?) had a perfect grasp of dynamics, dropping quietly shattering songs like “Dumb” among all the fuzz-bombs. The album spawned hit singles and sold a shitload of copies, so it did its thing commercially. And it brought the whole Midwestern/Northwestern scream-rock aesthetic to kids’ ears pretty much unvarnished, doing nearly as much to tweak listening habits as Nevermind had. Within a few months of its release, I was riding my bike to the record store so I could spend my lawn-mowing money on Amphetamine Reptile compilations. That probably wouldn’t have happened without In Utero.

Years later, In Utero is still held up as the iconic example of the audience-alienating “one for me” album, the one where a musician goes fully insular in the face of looming (or, in Cobain’s case, already-existing) pop stardom. In Cobain’s reported record-label battles, the album became, more or less, my generation’s Apocalypse Now, with Albini’s snowy Minnesota recording studio serving the same middle-of-nowhere function as Coppola’s Philippines jungle set. And if you want to imagine In Utero as an album about unhappy fame, there’s plenty of evidence there. The album’s opening line — “Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I’m bored and old” — is one for the ages. Another famous one, on the album’s catchiest song, almost matches it for sneer-factor: “I wish I was like you / Easily amused.” The slightly-tweaked “Smells Like Teen Spirit” riff on “Rape Me” is an obvious provocation, as is that song’s title. There’s a song called “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter,” and the song’s tone makes it clear that the title describes a bad thing.

But listening to it today, having lived a little, In Utero now strikes a different chord with me. It’s a tense, freaked-out new-fatherhood record — you know, like Yeezus. The album’s Wal-Mart-censored art was all anatomical fetus-based imagery. “Pennyroyal Tea” was named after a Victorian-era homemade abortion cocktail. There’s a line about Cobain’s own father — “I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad” — that directly reflects the whole holy shit my upbringing was terrible thought-pattern that occurs to almost every new father. There are references to babies and childhood all over the place. Cobain once said in an interview that this stuff was all a coincidence, that they didn’t have anything to do with his own new fatherhood. And as a 14-year-old, I was perfectly happy to accept these words at face value. Now, it’s like: Come on. Obviously this shit was dominating his thoughts, the same way it dominates the thoughts of everyone who has kids.

And Cobain was certainly smart enough to know he wasn’t about to be a great father. For one thing, he was a famous man with a famous wife, and famous peoples’ kids don’t exactly have a sterling record of health. And when he looked in the mirror, he saw a drug addict with crippling stomach issues, someone who owned a bunch of guns and harbored suicidal feelings, someone who was married to a crazy person. It’s one thing to have a kid and wonder if you can hold your shit together. It’s quite another to have your kid and know full well that you absolutely cannot hold your shit together, no way. That’s what I hear when I hear In Utero now: Someone coming into the clear and indisputable realization that he was in way over his head, and that it was going to have disastrous consequences for himself and for everyone who he loved. Way more than the production choices or the passive-aggressive fame-talk, that’s what animates this album: The primal terror of the shitty self-doomed father. That makes me love the album more, but it kind of makes me hate it, too.

In the comments section, go ahead and offer your own take on In Utero. What, if anything, did the album mean to you at the time? If you were old enough to be thinking about this kind of thing, how did it meet your expectations after Nevermind? How has it held up to you? How has its meaning changed? What memories do you associate with it? Do you listen to it more or less than Bleach and Nevermind?

I know the article, at the end, was asking for comments.......maybe not this post.

Did skip over 'Heart-Shaped Box' which I've just heard too many times & 'Rape Me' whose novelty has kinda worn off.

I had started listening to Grohl & Noveselic on a podcast talking about the process of making it (for the 20th anniversary promotional run) while playing snippets but quickly found myself bored.

Listening to either of those two has never really been particularly interesting to me, this was Cobain's band & they were the hired hands.

Instead just decided to put on 'In Utero' & let it ride.

I was surprised at how well the actual record holds up.

The Albini production decision at the time seemed like almost an overcorrection from the Sunset-Strip-Pop-Metal-Production-Sheen of 'Nevermind' but hearing it now it kinda makes sense.

The album sorta feels lived in & alive in a way that the prior record probably doesn't nowadays (can't remember when I last listened to that one straight-thru).

'Serve The Servants', 'Scentless Apprentice', 'Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle', 'Radio Friendly Unit Shifter' all still go hard as hell.

>'Serve The Servants', 'Scentless Apprentice', 'Francis Farmer
>Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle', 'Radio Friendly Unit
>Shifter' all still go hard as hell.

INDEED.

1. The songs repeating the soft/loud formula which were boring; Pennyroyal tea in particular sound like a mean-spirited parody with limp, half-assed strumming in the verses and then-BAM! Alternative moshpit! Hate those songs...

2. The songs where Cobain tried too hard to be on some Rapeman/Cows/Jesus Lizard/Melvins noise-rock/post-hardcore trip. I prefer the songs in that vein on "Incesticide" ("Bleach" didn't really have that sound; it was grunge (tm)); here, Cobain's screaming and the feedback just reeked of "Let's get rid of the pop-crowd and show that we are still underground" rather than playing that style in a more earnest fashion like the bands I mentioned. "Milk it" is dope though even with the Melvins-rip off bassline.

3. Songs like "very Ape", "Radio friendly unit shifter", "Serve the servants" etc. Here, Nirvana neither sounded like they were remaking the Nevermind-hits nor like a band trying too hard but instead like a really cool rock-band. More stuff like that and I would have been a fan of that record... I like "Dumb" as well but that one is more in a traditional mellow Nirvana vein, it doesn't really fit the formats I described...

>1. The songs repeating the soft/loud formula which were
>boring; Pennyroyal tea in particular sound like a
>mean-spirited parody with limp, half-assed strumming in the
>verses and then-BAM! Alternative moshpit! Hate those songs...
>
Not a big Pennyroyal Tea fan but more just because it sorta drones on with the elongated 'e' in the chorus. Don't hate it, don't love it.

Lyrically it was interesting but structurally/melodically/sonically it's not one I'd rank too high.

>2. The songs where Cobain tried too hard to be on some
>Rapeman/Cows/Jesus Lizard/Melvins noise-rock/post-hardcore
>trip. I prefer the songs in that vein on "Incesticide"
>("Bleach" didn't really have that sound; it was grunge (tm));
>here, Cobain's screaming and the feedback just reeked of
>"Let's get rid of the pop-crowd and show that we are still
>underground" rather than playing that style in a more earnest
>fashion like the bands I mentioned. "Milk it" is dope though
>even with the Melvins-rip off bassline.
>
See I would have thought you were including 'Milk It' with the first category.

The only song fitting this description on the album that I can really think of is 'Tourrette's' & it's just kind of a one-last-fuck-off-speed-and-shriek-minute between 'Radio Friendly Unit Shifter' & the album's farewell/coda with 'All Apologies'.

And they sorta had a song with that same intent on Nevermind (Territorial Pissings) before they even got big but I wouldn't have put it past Cobain to be already doing so just-in-case.

>3. Songs like "very Ape", "Radio friendly unit shifter",
>"Serve the servants" etc. Here, Nirvana neither sounded like
>they were remaking the Nevermind-hits nor like a band trying
>too hard but instead like a really cool rock-band. More stuff
>like that and I would have been a fan of that record... I like
>"Dumb" as well but that one is more in a traditional mellow
>Nirvana vein, it doesn't really fit the formats I
>described...

The first category had a very specific riff-style that was more garage-/trad rock based with kind of generic chord-progressions (think the More than afeelig-vibe) that follows the melody-line whereas the main riff in "Milk it" is a stone-cold *riff* on its own terms; very different from "Rape me" etc. It still has the soft/loud-formula but the Melvins-style Sludge riff to me gives it a different quality...

EDIT:And Scentless apprentice sound Rapeman as fuck to me. But yes, that one and Torettes and Milk It are the one I primarily think of in the second category

>Lyrically it was interesting but
>structurally/melodically/sonically it's not one I'd rank too
>high.

Song wasn't executed properly but it's one of his best lyrics ever imo. Needed a different arrangement or something.

>And they sorta had a song with that same intent on Nevermind
>(Territorial Pissings) before they even got big but I wouldn't
>have put it past Cobain to be already doing so just-in-case.

Yah....also 'drain you' has that middle noise section. Kinda sounds thrown in to impress the noise rock crowd...song probably would've been served better by a more traditional middle 8 but still doesn't ruin it for me. One of my fave melodies and hooks of their's.

The thoughts summing up the album as 'The primal terror of the shitty self-doomed father' rings true.

I wonder though...why does everyone quote the 'i tried hard to have a father but instead i had a dad' line. Imo...one of the most misunderstood lyrics I can think of. The two lines are:

As my bones grew they did hurt
They hurt really bad.
I tried hard to have a father
but instead i had a dad.

Cobain is very clearly doing a self-parody with this verse. And you can confirm that by the way he sings it. Even the guitar lick is pretty much taking the piss. His delivery is way over the top and sarcastic. He's basically making fun of himself....not trying to say something profound about his father. I don't get why that's not clear to people.