Day 0742 - In Utero

 Nirvana “In Utero” (1993) – got it

 

In my teens I was moving from mostly listening to my parents’ music, to getting into louder, heavier stuff.  There were a few albums (on cassette back then) from my brother’s collection that were starting to inform that transition.  Amongst these were the Nirvana albums “Nevermind” and “In Utero”.

With “In Utero” Nirvana were in the unenviable position of trying to follow up an album that had been a huge smash-hit, had reignited mainstream interest in punk and had helped helm the grunge movement… so, no pressure.

The band looked to kick back against the polished sound of “Nevermind” by hiring ‘punk’ producer Steve Albini.  Albini had worked with the Pixies, of whom Kurt Cobain was a fan, so that probably fed into the decision.  

The band had told Albini that they wanted to make a raw and uncompromising album, and he obliged, but it seems as though, once the record company heard the rough mixes, the compromises started.  Albini refused the band's request to remix the album, leading to several tracks being given a polishing remix by R.E.M’s regular producer Scott Lit.

You can kind of hear the difference between the two approaches.  Single “Heart Shaped Box” has a clean drum sound and clear vocals, whereas something like noisy opener “Serve the Servants” still has its roomy, noisy ambience favoured by Albini.  The raw, heartfelt "All apologies" sounds like the best of both worlds, with clean melodic, string-backed verses and raucous, 'recorded-in-someone's-bathroom' distorted choruses.

All in all, I feel like the mix and compromise makes the album more interesting than uneven.   More interesting than either another completely polished, ‘clean’ sounding Nevermind-esque recording, or a completely dirty, punky Albini-style record.

In true 1990s rock style, the album closes with a period of silence followed by the then-popular secret hidden track.