Grunge: Nirvana

I was listening to Nirvana today. Though my favorite grunge band is Alice In Chains, I have always approached Nirvana from an all together different perspective – the peculiarity of their (until of course Mudhoney happened to me) sound had always struck me; my approach to them lyrically came much later. In 90s Seattle, even though there were four other titans pushing the envelope in terms of avant garde music, their similarity to Nirvana or to any of each other can be purely attributed to similar geographical boundaries and prevailing ethos. Sonic variation and lyric-writing approaches were pretty broad – from Stone Temple Pilots through Alice In Chains to Soundgarden and Pearl Jam – they shared only an attitude probably and nothing else as bands, or so it seems to me. Any reference to the zeitgeist can be accredited to assiduous commercial agendas of record companies, or so I’d like to believe…

Coming back to Nirvana: Kurt’s creations could possibly be frowned upon by the highbrow, musical intelligentsia, but then again there can be no denying the fact that probably a few, if at all any, songwriters had tried or managed to capture honesty with as much power and irony as Kurt did. Kurt saw in a way that no one else did, no one wrote the way he did. Catharsis through expression had always been around, but creating a furious manic fury through music and words that was Nirvana, is another thing. Nirvana has been widely acclaimed as also been widely criticized. They have been overrated, been crowed-surfed and stage-dived to and been loathed and misunderstood as well. But for me, Nirvana had opened up a whole new landscape for me to swim in – a swim that has lasted this long. I am a fan of the sonic landscape of grunge…

Kurt did create a universe from which there was no escape, of truth that is real and hard to swallow. One could sing like Kurt did, if he refused to care about what the external thinks only if one were torn apart between expression and contradiction.

But Alice In Chains continues to be my favorite. But I will write about them some other time…