Nirvana Album Recommendations: "Icon"

Album Reviews

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Nirvana

[#] Icon (2010)

Just go listen to Nevermind.

Reviewed November 30, -0001

As bare-bones a set like this can get, Icon rounds up, brickwalls, and scrambles the running order of the singles of two of Nirvana's three albums and bookends them with "You Know You're Right", Nirvana's final recording as previously heard on their eponymous greatest hits, and two rather out of place Unplugged cuts. The material here is as bulletproof as it's ever been; the waters of "Come As You Are" run inky enough to drown in, "In Bloom" delivers its bubblegum pop like a backhanded compliment, and "Right" gives one final, harrowing thrash before signing off in resignation. It's just that it's also anemic, missing any material from Bleach or Nirvana's non-album singles ("Love Buzz", "Sappy", "Oh, the Guilt", "Aneurysm", "The Man Who Sold the World"), and utterly irrelevant in the wake of the streaming revolution that'd come roughly two years after its release.

Essential:	"You Know You're Right", "Come As You Are", "Lithium"
Quintessential:	"In Bloom"
Non-Essential:	This set's existence
Rating: