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Rating: There are two things I have always liked about Kurt Cobain. Firstly, he was born on the same day as me, which allows me to brag a little, even though it doesn't help much with the girls. Secondly, he was a great rock connoisseur. Among his discoveries are the Meat Puppets, the Pixies—which, let's be honest, not too many people cared about before Cobain declared his love for them—and then the Vaselines.
The Vaselines were a little band of two Scottish kids named Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly, founded in 1986. They had only produced a few EPs and an LP. Just a handful of songs in total. Cobain tried to revitalize them, to the point of inviting them to open a Nirvana concert in Edinburgh. He attempted to do what Bukowski did with John Fante. Despite having such a guardian angel, the Vaselines never soared high in the golden skies of rock 'n' roll. They remained a so-called "cult" for a few passionate fans and indie pop fetishists, or what I believe is more accurately described as twee pop.
"The Way of the Vaselines" is a well-executed summary of their work, a distorted production where the melody seems to fit perfectly with an uninterrupted hum of the soul. It would probably have been a much-loved album by a young Torless or a young Holden. Let's face it; it's a record for eternal kids, even somewhat nerdy. The production, while a bit scrappy, and the writing, even somewhat raw, always manages to connect with our inner child. This probably struck Cobain to the point that he covered several of our beloved Vaselines' songs. The influences are very clear and range from the Jesus and Mary Chain to a certain cheeky electro-pop against the backdrop of a typical Albion-extracted new wave. At first listening, I understand that the two Scots might seem like a kind of Moldy Peaches avant la lettre, but upon deeper listening, you can see that their influence goes beyond the more melodic moments of Nirvana and reaches what I believe are Belle & Sebastian's best moments.
But what lies deep within this record, I think the best descriptions beyond names and labels can be found in smoky Scottish afternoons, in bedrooms with yellow and green patterned wallpaper, in the frail voice of a grandmother who, although we have already grown, insists on giving us butter cookies made by her once light and slender hands, now only wrinkled and aged. Those afternoons lost reading comforting coming-of-age novels or smoking cigarettes never finished, tossed halfway. These atmospheres are found in songs like "Molly's Lips", "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam", "No Hope". Then we go out, suspended as it were, to look for some second-hand books or to call at the phone booth a girl we like. At the booth because we ran out of credit on the cell phone. Then we return home, it's dinner time, and we start by drinking a few beers only to end up drinking even 5-6. We return to the record and feel like dancing in our bedroom. Just hopping around, and lo and behold, "The Day I Was Horse", "Dum-Dum", and the masterpiece "Son of a Gun" come to our rescue. And I assure you, their version is a million light years better than the Nirvana one present in "Incesticide".
And the girl we love, even if she's not right there next to you, she is still close, the Vaselines tell us: "sunshine is in my bedroom when you play". In the morning, we wake up with a dry mouth, we have to go to work or study, and those sounds accompany us. We no longer know the color of melancholy or the shape of joy; thanks to these songs, everything has mixed, and even the trees on the avenue near home seem to bend down to drink the water that the sky and the dew have thrown at their feet, not with the roots but with their mouths.
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