I've always talked about how my favorite music tends to mix beauty with ugliness, and this is one of the very best examples on that. On its surface, it's a noisy album with abrasive guitar tones, blasts of feedback, dissonance, and screaming, but on the flip side, Kurt Cobain clearly knew what he was doing. The songs are well constructed with catchy melodies, interesting lyrics, and great production from Steve Albini. Though Nevermind was more influential, I think this is the better album. The sequencing is masterful -- "Serve the Servants" is a perfect opener with it's opening line of "Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old", "Dumb is a great ending to side 1, "Very Ape" is a super cool opening to the slightly weirder side 2, and "All Apologies" is a great closer for both the album and the band's career. Other highlights for me are "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter", with one of Cobain's coolest bridges, and "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle", which is my favorite Nirvana track. 5 stars.