Nirvana

Nirvana's heaviest album, with its prominent Melvins influence, delivers the band's perfect prescription -- a head-nodding riff, Kurt Cobain's freaked-out loner verses followed by mirror-punching just before the chorus -- just as powerfully as it did in 1989. Their next record would go global, but Bleach piledrives harder. The crisp remastering of this deluxe version dares you not to turn tracks like "Scoff," "Swap Meet" and "School" all the way up. An entire live set from the early days is included, and the sound on these cuts is fantastic.

Hot on the heels of Live at Reading is this dolled-up 20th-anniversary (!) edition of Nirvana's
debut, which barely hit the radar on its initial release but whose resonance ballooned as
the band scorched the earth. Now, its near-greatness is plain, most clearly on "About a
Girl," in the abraded Lennon-McCartney chord changes, and in the existential grunge howl
of "School." The bonus live tracks, also pre-Dave Grohl — from Portland, Oregon,... More >