Nirvana Album Recommendations: "With the Lights Out"

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

[#] With the Lights Out (2004)

A scratchy, errata-filled, captivating look behind the curtain.

Reviewed November 24, 2025

Rumors and intentions of a Nirvana boxset had been swirling since the late 90s, but well-publicized legal slapfights between the guys who were actually in the band and Kurt's widow Courtney Love kept With the Lights Out from being completed until 2004. I was pretty hardcore into Nirvana as a little kid, and this boxset was my gateway into the world of alternate mixes, demos, dates, performers, and music geekery that I devour with every band I get into. For that, I'll always love it. As an actual piece of media, though, its faults are hard to deny. In short, plenty of filler, oversights, mastering errors, and missed opportunities for songs to appear on here, but the best material still has that captivating Nirvana raw power that will make the right people (me) enjoy the dig through.

Each of With the Lights Out's three CDs have serious ups and downs. You get the wonders of Kurt's moody, experimental, earwormy home demos on the Bleach disc—and a ton of shitty live performances and understandably discarded early band tracks. The Nevermind disc is at its best with the Smart sessions and rehearsals leading up to the album, but is bloated to the gills with already-released and easy-to-find material in place of better rarities. You can listen to the scratchy, sensational sweet pop of the acoustic "Do Re Mi" and wonder what could've been on the In Utero disc (the objective best of the three), or enjoy the two flattest acoustic renditions of "Pennyroyal Tea" and "All Apologies" Geffen could've chosen. With the Lights Out is hugely imperfect and a little confused about what it wants to be, but you take it as a curious cache of worktapes instead of the final word on an imperfect, confused storm of a band, and it's a fascinating listen.

Essential:	"Clean Up Before She Comes", "Drain You", "Do Re Mi"
Quintessential:	"Smells Like Teen Spirit" (the barn rehearsal demo)
Non-Essential:	"Raunchola/Moby Dick"
Rating:
Further listening:	"End it Someday: Looking Back on With the Lights Out" on Letters From Somnolescent