Nirvana
With The Lights Out - Box Set

We had to wait for the whims of Cobain's widow, her legal issues with the two surviving Nirvana members, before we could listen to what she called "the holy grail of rock": at first, she promised it as an ideal complement to the diaries of the poor husband that had already earned her millions of dollars, then she retracted, trying to persuade Grohl and Novoselic to release it as a sort of "greatest hits" single which, as we know, has more commercial appeal than a quadruple box set that comes with a hefty price in euros, probably too expensive for the average young/unemployed and/or student Nirvana fan.

In short, without dragging it out, I've never liked Mrs. Love, and I believe she handled the box set project terribly, reducing it to a partial collection of stuff that had almost all been bootlegged, and the nice packaging, excellent booklet, and two or three gems aren't enough to rid you of the annoying feeling of having been fooled.

So, how do the four stars make sense? Simply due to the monstrous strength of Kurt Cobain's songs, the greatest songwriter of his generation and an icon of the contradictory and, let's face it, exciting '90s.
Cobain's talent in this box set emerges at times confused due to ultra-amateur recordings such as an embryonic version of "teen spirit," while other times it's disarmingly thrown in your face (listen to believe "all apologies" voice and guitar, a collapsing experience). The tracklist is organized in chronological order, helping to understand the evolution of a band that in only seven years changed the history of rock: it starts with the dissonant and noisy punk of the beginnings where you can begin to sense (audio quality of the sessions permitting) how great Nirvana would become. "clean up before she comes" already shows all the qualities of Cobain as a songwriter: great harmonic sense and an ability to encapsulate all the tricks that make a "pop" song great in a simple atmosphere.

The entire box alternates between valid and excellently recorded songs like the trio of "Leadbelly" covers made with friend Mark Lanegan, "Blandest" or the already known and always exciting "Sappy" and recordings that feel like archival leftovers, adding nothing to the prodigious story of Nirvana. The DVD that completes the work is the perfect mirror of this huge oxymoron that is the box: useless and essential.
At the beginning, you get an hour of pre-Bleach era rehearsals identical, if it weren't for the fact that they are Nirvana, to those of your unfortunate friend who plays in a punk band and gets recorded by you. From fetishists. But it's right, however, to remember an electric and vibrant "jesus don't wants me for a sunbeam" and in closing, the three pals swapping instruments with Kurt on drums engaging in "season in the sun", a re-adaptation of a Brel song. To conclude, there’s also a more romantic vision of why "with the lights out" is so fragmented: the person who curated the box set was concerned with showing us the true soul of Nirvana and depicting them in their entirety: lo-fi, rough, inconsistent, goofy and still great as no one ever was.

It's up to you to decide the end and plot of a movie still worth watching.