Nirvana - Bleach (1989)

If you took aside some average chick in an asymmetrical shirt and a bad perm in 1988, made her listen to this album, and told her that within the next few years, the music world would be taken over by this ugly group of ratty looking misfits, she would've sat there and stared at you like you just unzipped your pants and pissed in her New Kids On The Block lunchbox. Given the shine, gloss and sparkle of everything we remember about 1980s, it's hard to even reconcile everything pre-Nevermind with everything post-Nevermind. Even hearing Bleach offers no suggestion of that breakthrough.

If you've never heard Bleach, picture a murkier Nevermind. No, not abrasive like In Utero. Just murky.  The music has forward momentum like a puddle of ooze gradually devouring your floor, but as usual, Kurt Cobain whines, yelps and slurs nearly every word like he barely has control over his mouth. The band were still distinguishing themselves from their influences here, but more than that, they were having trouble distinguishing their songs, which run together a lot. If they aren't taking a nearly amelodic approach to Black Sabbath-style dirges ("Sifting" just goes on forever), they're playing straight punk so sloppy that they must be keeping it together on sheer intuition.



What puts it across as well as it manages to is the natural catharsis of their approach, as well as Cobain's charisma as a singer - much as he probably resented it, he had a dynamic presence on vocals, and it made some of the sludgier material here more engaging than it should be. And albums cannot get by solely on that aesthetic: the best parts of Bleach are when some hints of a hook creep in, such as "Blew," and "About A Girl," which is the most adequate foreshadowing of what's in store later.

The rest of Bleach tends to feel not so much like a collection of songs as it does one, long, mangled barrage of sound from a real cracker jack group of pissers. Every once in a while, some of us are in the mood for a big, shitty mess, so it's not unworthy or anything, but it's not any sort of conventionally good album unless doom, gloom and ugliness is your thing in rock music. Otherwise it just isn't distinguished enough to be much more than a curiosity for grunge fans.



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