Nirvana's Bleach

Many people didn't really get hip to Nirvana's debut album until its follow-up, Nevermind, made the band a household name. The infectious melodies and sleek production of that seminal album left some of them unprepared for "Bleach", with its raw riffs, minimalist lyrics, and overall sludgy sound. In retrospect, the record stands out as one of the strongest ever released by the mythical Sub Pop label. Indeed, it's hard to believe that Nirvana had been functioning as a group for little over a year and a half when they recorded it.

Guitarist Jason Everman is credited on the album, though he didn't play on it. He'd been recently recruited to help Nirvana beef up their sound for an upcoming club tour, and they gave him honorable mention to make him feel more at home in the band. Two drummers make an appearance: Dale Crover on "Floyd the Barber" and "Paper Cuts", and Chad Channing on the rest of the tracks. Kurt appeared on the liner sleeve as Kurdt Kobain. Such was Nirvana in 1989: a band in almost constant flux because it was still rapidly evolving, honing its sound and vision along the way. On Bleach, one can hear various ideas that were refined to great effect on Nevermind, as well as others that were seen as false starts and subsequently discarded.

Kurt's approach to writing the lyrics was the stuff of punk rock mythology. At least half of the songs that were to be recorded for Bleach didn't have words up until the night before the first recording session was to start. Kurt simply stayed up late that night and wrote one after another. "Swap Meet", "Mr. Mustache", "Negative Creep", "Scoff" and "Sifting", among others, were all products of this frantic woodshedding.

Kurt's melodic sensibilities were in fine form for one of the album's highlights, "About a Girl". This song (rumored to have been written for his then-girlfriend, Tracy Mirander) is as irresistibly catchy as anything on Nevermind, and was showcased to great effect during the bands Unplugged appearance - one of the last performances they ever gave.

The band later claimed that they'd wanted to be more experimental on their debut, but they met with a lot of resistance from Sub Pop. The label had a preference for a kind of retro hard rock that gave homage to '70's icons like Alice Cooper and Aerosmith. Ironically, this limitation actually helped the band members to remember their love for some of the music they'd grown up with and incorporate it into their own sound.

Bleach would probably be remembered today (if at all) as a curiosity if we all didn't know that story of what happened afterwards. It serves now as a kind of window into the workings of this legendary band at a crucial point in their transformation. All the ingredients that made them great are already apparent, but they would require another year or so to percolate before bursting forth in true majesty. What Bleach reveals is the hunger of the band as they groped for their own voice - and also a bit of their innocence, as it existed in a time before the trappings of fame began to make everything a real drag.