Nirvana
In Utero

THE REVIEW

"In Utero" is Nirvana's last album, yet Cobain said it was like a return to the origins...

We are in 1993: the commercial success of "Nevermind" had brought the band a popularity never before seen for a group that came from the alternative scene. But after two years, Cobain's hope, that the same popularity, so cursed, could at least strengthen his artistic independence, becomes more concrete thanks to a producer like Steve Albini. Indeed, "In Utero" is nothing that could be defined as a follow-up to "Nevermind".

The album already starts with a recusatio: "teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old...": in this sense, therefore, there is the group's intention to leave behind the burden of "Nevermind" to face a new musical discourse. If songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come As You Are", "Territorial Pissings" had become generational anthems, considered an expression of a common feeling, in "In Utero", almost programmatically, as it is evident from the title, we find none of this. The tracks on the album, unequivocally, express above all personal feelings and states of mind, which could never be considered on a general level or applied to generational groups.

"In Utero" is Cobain's album, of his true anger, his true pain, but also his true love: for his wife ("Heart-Shaped Box") and for his daughter, of his tenacity in defending this small world of affections, too often offended by the media and common people ("Rape Me"). The gossip about him, the role granted to him by acquired fame, that role of "spokesperson" for a generation Cobain always wanted to decline, had put him greatly at discomfort. He never recognized himself in that role, also because it was not in his nature. According to many, Cobain was rather quiet. He did not like to show off. All the noise around his person, his music, must have seemed like a tremendous contradiction. One of the reasons for his suicide was certainly this, although we can never understand the meaning of that gesture. Cobain had everything to live happily, yet he was not. In this sense, "In Utero" can be considered a dramatic alarm bell for what was to come a few months later.

The album is full of references to the "fame" issue, even though everything is surrounded by subtle but bitter irony. The title originally chosen was "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die", but then it was changed: Cobain said people would not have understood it, as it would have been a completely ironic title: he already felt like a rock 'n roll stereotype, to which, as traditionally, there should not have been a tragic death by overdose lacking. Evidently, the only way to overcome the stereotype seemed to him to adhere to the stereotype itself... His suicide was in essence an ironic gesture, albeit tragic, and at the same time, the only way out, a catharsis, the only expedient capable of nullifying everything, bringing everything back to a primordial state of purity: that precisely evoked by the definitively chosen title.

From a musical point of view, the album stands as an extreme evolution of grunge, a genre that perhaps never existed and anchored to its period of glory, but at the same time represents its overcoming. The pattern is always the same: Nirvana is basically a punk-rock band, which bases its originality on using the multiple musical experiences that have characterized the history of rock. And this applies to the disc in question, but not completely. With "In Utero," in fact, we are faced with a new rock whose sophistication is based, in some cases, on its extreme simplicity ("Pennyroyal Tea", "Dumb", "All Apologies"), in others on the extreme sense of estrangement conveyed by some tracks like "Milk It", "Tourette's", "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter": tranquility and estrangement then, almost in imitation of the inner motions of the soul, expressed by a distorted, dark guitar, much closer to the bass and already very far from the clichés of punk-rock.

It is already post-rock in "In Utero", the true "denial" of Nirvana, an album that, by renouncing the mechanisms that had brought grunge to prominence, ends the movement itself, something that will become definitive with Cobain's death, whose musical and life experience is perfectly summarized in the record: authenticity, purity, desire to live...like a fetus in its mother's womb.