It’s dark, with some candles around a stage and a few hundred
\npeople in what looks like a university auditorium. A few guitars
\nand a drum set are on the stage, looking innocent, and the crowd is
\nglad to be inside on a chilly November night.<\/p>\n
All of a sudden the band that defined grunge walks onto the
\nstage, flashes brief smiles at each other and the audience, and
\ntakes their place on wooden stools. The singer, wearing a green
\ncardigan and brushing back stringy blond hair from his eyes,
\nintroduces the first song by saying “This is off our first record.
\nMost people don’t own it.”<\/p>\n
Thus begins
\nUnplugged In New York<\/i>, the final album released before said
\nsinger Kurt Cobain’s suicide five months later. Knowing the history
\nnow makes listening to this album much more meaningful – like the
\nthird
\nStar Wars<\/i> prequel, we already know the sad story, but
\nwatching it unfold is still emotional every time.<\/p>\n
This album meant so much to so many Generation Xers who saw
\nCobain as their spokesman. I was one of them. Kurt railed against
\nauthority and hypocrisy and celebrated disenfranchisement by
\ndetaching from the world himself. So it is only fitting the
\nreluctant spokesman for the grunge generation spends his last major
\nconcert sitting on a stool, barely looking at the audience and
\ntotally focused on his music.<\/p>\n
In this acoustic setting, everything is restrained but the
\npassion of the lyrics. Dave Grohl uses brushes on his drums while
\nPat Smear and Krist Novoselic keep the noise to a minimum. Kurt,
\nhowever, sings with just as much clenched fury as he can muster
\nwhere necessary, switching to ironic observer and tortured teenager
\nwhen necessary. The music of Nirvana never felt more urgent and
\nneeded than here, and this album proves their songwriting skills
\nwere among the top of the alternative heap.<\/p>\n
Half of this album is covers, in another attempt to appear
\nhumble. But the covers are just as good as the originals – Bowie’s
\n“Man Who Sold the World,” in particular, lends a whole new
\ndimension to the 1971 original. The band also invites two of the
\nMeat Puppets on stage for three songs, which turn out to be the
\nbest sequence on the album. But the most chilling is the final
\nscream on Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” where Kurt
\nscreams the final line “SHIVER” and then pauses before finishing
\nthat song. You could cut the emotion with a knife during that
\nsilence.<\/p>\n
Of course, when Kurt sings “And I swear that I don’t have a gun”
\nin the beginning and fades out with “All Apologies” at the end, we
\nare hearing his suicide note. Maybe I helped kill him by asking him
\nto be something he did not want to be. Maybe the drugs and Courtney
\ndid the job instead. Whatever your theory is, this is Kurt’s final
\nlegacy to the world, and the best album Nirvana ever recorded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":27089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5680],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-38421","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-nirvana","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38421"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38421"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}