So why is Nirvana’s Incesticide on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
I’ve been working on this best 1,000 albums ever project for a long time now. I’ve been working on this best 1,000 albums ever project for a long time now. A long time.
So it’s thrilling and a little bit surreal to be on the edge of the “top 200” of the whole shebang and finally get to write a piece on Nirvana, one of my most favorite bands of all time.
When you dig into Nirvana’s output outside of the “formal” studio albums (Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero) they produced during their productive and yet tragically short career, you find a wealth of eclectic influences from all over the musical map. Side note that one reason I’ve always been relatively more drawn to Nirvana versus other popular “grunge” bands of the era is because of my love for punk rock, new wave, and garage rock/punk, which you can hear laced through much of their material.
It’s really fun, for example, to listen to the nerd rock new wave of Devo’s “Turn Around” and then see what Nirvana did with it (ever so slightly retitled as the one word, “Turnaround”).
Another example that’s wildly different: “Aero Zeppelin” is like the results of a formal experiment along the lines of, “What if we put Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin through a grunge-encrusted blender?”
And then it’s fascinating that Incesticide, ostensibly a “B sides and rarities” release put out in the wake of the explosive success Nevermind, includes in “Aneurysm” what is easily a Top 5 all-time Nirvana song, and which is my favorite song of all, depending on the day*.
* On other days it can pivot to songs ranging from “Drain You” to “Verse Chorus Verse” to “Oh the Guilt” to “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” the riveting Unplugged album closer.
Quite simply, “Aneurysm” is one of the most exciting songs I’ve experienced in my lifetime. The guitar riff crushes, and the loud-soft-loud dynamic catapults it along to ever greater heights through to the mesmerizing and frenzied ending – with Kurt Cobain howling beat me out of me over and over.
Speaking of the lyrics: they’re enigmatic yet fascinating, allowing us to insert whatever meaning we’d like – a spurned lover, a twisted (come on over…) relationship with drugs, or maybe just a frantic addiction to music, perhaps?
“Fun” isn’t normally a word associated with Nirvana, but I’ll go there and say that “(New Wave) Polly” is genuinely thrilling and fun.
Covering themselves, Nirvana transforms the gorgeous, acoustic, and somewhat haunting version of “Polly” that most people are familiar with from Nevermind and turns it into a lightspeed punked-up new wave blast.
“Sliver” is probably one of the better-known songs off of Incesticide (and in fact it has the most plays by way of Spotify as of this writing, with just under 72 million). A bouncy bass line from Krist Novoselic is the only thing that accompanies Cobain at the start before it launches into a punk rock assault with a repeated chorus of grandma take me home.
For years I believed that the narrative of “Sliver” alludes to a serious and disturbing story of incest and abuse, but I’ve read that Kurt Cobain insisted that it’s merely about a young child’s confusion.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with Nirvana’s Incesticide
I’ll get into this more in another entry (yes, there’s more Nirvana coming, kids!), but side note that if you’re interested in learning more about Kurt Cobain’s life, the creation of Nirvana, and life in Washington state during the 1970s and 1980s (something I was quite interested in as a transplant to the state circa 2016), I highly recommend the excellently written and researched Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross.
Some stats & info about Nirvana – Incesticide
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Punk Rock, Grunge, Alternative Rock, Seattle Bands
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Incesticide released? 1992
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #206 out of 1,000
Nirvana’s Incesticide on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Nirvana’s Incesticide that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Love you so much, it makes me sick.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.