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Nirvana - Bleach Audio CD

A fair review of the Nirvana "Bleach" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Nirvana reviews here, or go back to the Nirvana tabs.

Nirvana Band: Nirvana
Title: Bleach
Rating:
Release Date: 2008-12-10
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Blew 2: Floyd the Barber 3: About a Girl 4: School 5: Love Buzz 6: Paper Cuts 7: Negative Creep 8: Scoff 9: Swap Meet 10: Mr. Moustache 11: Sifting 12: Big Cheese 13: Downer

the one that started it all
It was the song S I F T I N G from Bleach
that spawned this book:
220: S I F T I N G ~ The Alien Battle Royale or How we met the Spirit of Kurt Cobain

Even in his youth, Kurt is better than even when he is dead.


BLEACH : Nirvana's best album *
Nirvana was truly a great rock band, forget "Teen Spirit" for awhile, the "grunge" label and hype-they rocked, and Kurt was a great pure songwriter. Great HEAVY ROCK cd. This is beer can rock at it's best. I bet John Lennon would have loved Kurt's vocals, especially the (primal) screams. Jam packed with killer guitar riffs, tight and efficient pop melodies, killer hard rock-punk gems like "Scoff", "Negative Creep", "Floyd The Barber" and the funked out cover of "Love Buzz" are awesome. Nirvana's first album remains a stone cold classic, and one of the greatest debut records ever. Right up there with Cheap Trick's first or the first Doors album. Believe it!
Bleach delivers the goods from start to finish. Recommended for anyone who likes to ROCK OUT.


Awesome debut
Hard and heavy, yet soulful and unique, truly amazing. Great hard rock debut, this was the guts of grunge and a revolutionary time in music.


Nirvana's first album is, although rough around the edges, still a cornerstone of grunge
This actually makes some kind of sense in the area of marketing, because most anyone who would buy Bleach has already heard the band's radio hits, of which Bleach has none, and it almost needs to be spelled out that the album is in fact by Nirvana, the same band that tore down as many barriers and rounded up as many fans as they did within two years after its release. When I first bought Bleach, it came with a sticker on it, a black and white picture of Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and original drummer Chad Channing, with the words "This is Nirvana's First Album" in the signature Nirvana font.

Bleach shows the band in a much different condition than they are best known for. Instead of the later problems with fame, they had a hard enough time putting bread on the table let alone getting noticed when it was being made. It comes as a surprise to many that an album with as much toil and trouble behind its recording and production as Bleach could be so much less monumental in comparison to Nevermind and In Utero, but the album is actually more "grungy" than most everything else was on the grunge market at the time, and it did do some things that hadn't been approached before.

Instead of combining melodicism and heavy production like Nevermind and In Utero would later do, Bleach seems to waver back and forth between the two. It is hard to listen to the albums pop pieces, Blew and About a Girl, in context with the rest of the album's stark heaviness, but in that sense this contrast actually foreshadows some of the band's later work. Side A is the most consistent and powerful, containing the aforementioned hits as well as two songs worth of scalding guitar heroics, School and the Shocking Blue cover of Love Buzz. Much of the rest of the album is extremely heavy, most times to the point where it is rather silly, and also rather poorly written. There are a couple sludgey songs that are heavily inspired by The Melvins, namely Paper Cuts and Sifting. The rest are fast and heavy, with the verses consisting of uninspired riffing with pockets of memorable choruses in between. Lyrically Bleach goes back and forth between interesting and meaningful vocal melodies to scowling potty humor. In short, Cobain has clearly already learned how to write memorable, meaningful hooks, but doesn't really know what to do with them.

Two essential tracks from the Bleach sessions that are actually very consistent were not included on the original pressing of the album. The 1991 remastered reissue contains Big Cheese and Downer, two of the better songs from the sessions. It makes little sense that these songs were not included on the original release. Big Cheese is a grimey rocker much in the vein of Love Buzz. Downer is the shortest song present, clocking in at under two minutes, but does more damage than many of the albums less accomplished songs combined, presenting a pessimistic world view as well as some of the band's most memorable riffs from their early years.

Some of these songs may seem dated or cliche, but in fact this is a very early grunge album that most everyone liked and took cues from upon its release. Although it is undeniably patchy, Nirvana mostly have the right idea, and Bleach is one of the heaviest and most influential early grunge albums as well as a document of an era in music, paving the way for Nevermind two years later.


I love nirvana
I had to replace it! Bleach is a lot different from the sound of their other albums, and it's their first. Nirvana was one of my first favorite bands!! I used to have this album (bleach) and someone "borrowed" and never returned it. a must have for nirvana fans!.


You can see a complete list of all Nirvana discography, or go back to the Nirvana tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.

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