1001 Albums Summary

I came back to this after a long break, and I was a preteen when it came out so didn't really get it at the time. It speaks to me now with adult ears, and reminds me of my own time as a teen where escape from a restrictive set of norms and an abusive parent seemed incredibly important. I think it's sitting with me differently partly because a lot of this is songs about what it feels like to be told who you are by people and a society that prefer to interact with a stereotype than a complex human in a real way. Take Come As You Are. Simplistically it is come as you are, be yourself. But "as you are, as you were, as I want you to be" is a neatly satirical twist in the tail and, as is common of my experience in repressive situations, is a demand wearing the mask of welcome. Kurt's welcome appears to be real, but reflects a fairly abusive society. Ironically the song seems even more relevant now in the falsity of those personas than it did then, given that both that and the coming "as a trend" line seem to reflect Kurt's distate for curated selves that are not self-actuated but driven by societal norms. This song feels actively relevant to me in an age of performative identities. Lithium is the centrepiece, and it's bipolar both musically and lyrically to an extent that makes it slightly painful to listen to. It lifts and it kills the energy, and is for me, in the end, an exercise in the remaining black shadow that always undercuts the happy parts even when presenting happiness. It sits really interestingly with so repeatedly saying that it's hard to have real interactions in many of the other tracks. Then there's Polly, which is the bleakest track on the record both in terms of the humanity and the mundanity of the captor singing softly and self-centredly about his casual approach to abuse. Territorial Pissings is the blunt instrument. Reading around this, I see Cobain said he saw macho men treating sex and power the way animals mark territory, and he wanted them strung up by their balls with Valerie Solanas stapled to their bodies. It's not subtle, and that's just as it should be. I like that the album has a stance that is not mealy mouthed, just in the same way that In Bloom is a frank rejection of unthinking singing the lyrics without engagement. The production is more poppy rock than punk, but the attitude was still there. So In Bloom rejects people who sing with a lack of engagement with what's said, Come as You Are reflects falsity and a lack of engagement with the real interpersonally, Polly explicitly presents an abuser who doesn't care about the pain of his captive, and Lithium deals with the ever present pain of depression that is uncomfortable and masked in a wider society. Stay Away is the coda. The poison skin armour is also saying you can't let anyone close, and so there's an isolated prisoners' dilemma where even Kurt keeps people distant due to his own hurt and repeats the cycle somewhat. It is, at heart, a very sad record. The album, frankly, sounds like like permission to name what's been done to you and how you feel combined with a rejection of people who refuse to engage with the real. It was true to itself, and it remains true because the things it engages with are fairly timeless. I'm really glad I came back to this, the album is great. And, ironically, it is indeed catchily and relatively commercially produced; like Outkast and In Bloom say, a lot of people don't want to feel it, they just want to dance.

The catchy songs didn't have anything to say, and the frilly songs weren't pretty enough to catch me as folk rock. For me this fell slightly tediously between two stools.