In Utero Review

The plan was abrasion. Two weeks, no polish, drums that sound like they were recorded from the next room and guitars mixed to hurt. What ruins the plan is that Cobain kept writing melodies. Heart Shaped Box is a hook wrapped in a lyric about disease and dependence. All Apologies is a lullaby with a cello and one of the plainest choruses he ever wrote. Dumb and Pennyroyal Tea are lovely and small.

Around them sit Scentless Apprentice and Milk It and Tourette's, which are pure noise and belong there, because the record needs the contrast to work. The lyrics are the best of his career, specific and bodily and unpleasant in a way the previous album only gestured at, and there is a lot of grim comedy in them that people miss. Two tracks were remixed to make the singles usable, which was a compromise but not a betrayal. Harder to love on first hearing and considerably harder to exhaust.