Nirvana: In Utero Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Nirvana: In Utero Blu-ray Movie Review

Born again.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 11, 2013

Nirvana’s In Utero has been a virtually daily part of my life for much of the past two decades or so, but not for the reasons most fans might say the same thing. As someone who came along toward the end of the Baby Boom years, I don’t quite make the cut for Nirvana’s appeal to Generation X-ers, but Kurt Cobain and I did share one salient interest (perhaps even obsession) in common: Seattle born actress and “problem child” Frances Farmer. My fascination with Farmer led to decades of research, and I’m widely credited with having debunked a lot of misrepresentations that sprang up about her after her death, misrepresentations that in fact evidently Kurt and Courtney Love unfortunately believed. But Cobain’s suicide and the first wide publication of the findings of my research were nearly simultaneous, and when one of the first versions of my initial findings hit the internet shortly thereafter, I found myself inundated with an incredible array of emails from Nirvana and Cobain fans from all around the world, thinking that somehow because I knew so much about Farmer, I must therefore know an equal amount about Kurt (and for some, Courtney). “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” remains one of the most visceral songs off of In Utero, a scathing indictment of both the vagaries of mental illness as well as the perhaps civic carelessness of the Emerald City, but one of the funniest compliments I ever received was from a Nirvana insider who contacted me years ago and told me that Frances’ revenge was now complete, since I, a Portlander, had been the one to clarify years of false information that had been spread about her. (This joke requires an understanding of the often testy “sibling” relationship between Seattle and Portland.) And truth be told, it was this onslaught of emails about the Nirvana-Farmer connection (which continue to arrive in my in box with a rather surprising amount of regularity) which actually got me to really listen to the band for the first time. In Utero remains an incredibly defiant piece of writing. Kurt may have been dealing with his own inner demons more than anyone ever really realized at the time, but he wasn’t above raging outward at virtually anything that crossed his path, and the visceral intensity of his emotional tenor is one of In Utero’s most defining characteristics.

It’s a little ironic that an album called In Utero should have suffered such disastrous birth pangs, but what seemed like an easy slam dunk for Nirvana after the overwhelming success of Nevermind turned into a rather major imbroglio that saw the band torn between their proto-indie leanings and the new cog in the music industry machine they had at that time so recently become. The album was famously dubbed “unlistenable” in its first version mixed by producer Steve Albini, which then led to a whole new round of recriminations and controversies, with both Geffen and the band attempting to do whatever damage control they could. Once the retooled version of the album premiered, it quickly shot to the top of the Billboard charts, but at least some Nirvana fans were left to wonder if the band was living up to its promise or cavalierly throwing it all away in a musical maelstrom that amounted to what sounded (at least at times) like an Id-fueled rant of epic proportions.

It's of course difficult to listen to In Utero's wails of agony and discontent now without hearing them as a sonic foreshadowing of the tragedy which would soon befall Kurt. The album actually seems less problematic and more cohesive now than it perhaps did two decades ago, serving as what probably would have been a transitional phase for Nirvana had Cobain lived longer. Kurt seemed, in those short, chaotic years when Nirvana was the band of the moment, to always be caught between perception and reality. The world wanted him to be another Rock God when one can imagine he might have been just as happy making home recordings for his own amusement. In Utero remains a testament to a uniquely forceful, but haunted, vision by a man (and a band) who refused to be chewed up by the corporate machinery surrounding their success. That said, there's a frankly schizophrenic quality to the album which is perhaps a fitting mirror of Cobain's inner world at the time. At one moment, he's screaming at the listener to "stay away", and then at the next, he's inviting that same listener in with some surprisingly sweet, even subtle, songs. The album may in fact have not been successful in exorcizing whatever demons were pecking at Kurt's psyche, but In Utero is an unforgettable experience, a window into a roiling soul trying to come to terms with the mere fact of being alive.

This audio Blu-ray offers only the original running order of In Utero with no bonus/alternative mixes:

1. Serve the Servants
2. Scentless Apprentice
3. Heart-Shaped Box
4. Rape Me
5. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle
6. Dumb
7. Very Ape
8. Milk It
9. Pennyroyal Tea
10. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
11. tourette's
12. All Apologies

Nirvana: In Utero Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Aside from the static menu screen, there's no video on this disc.

Nirvana: In Utero Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The insert in this audio Blu-ray's keepcase includes the following text:

What is High Fidelity Pure Audio?

High Fidelity Pure Audio combines the vast storage space and bandwidth of a Blu-ray disc with the original high quality recorded material to create a uniquely luxurious listening experience. We take audio in its purest and uncompressed form and master it onto a Blu-ray disc, retaining all of its original sound range and character to deliver you audio as it was meant to be heard. Because none of the disc is used up by video content and we are able to offer audio at its purest form.

Putting aside the "luxurious listening experience" for a moment, some may be wondering why the "vast storage space" of the Blu-ray disc didn't allow for any already existing supplementary material like the original Albini mixes or other tracks that have adorned other In Utero releases through the years (even with three—perhaps redundant—audio options on the disc, the disc utilizes only around 5.7GB of a 25GB disc).

In terms of the audio quality, it's hard to imagine In Utero sounding better. In order to get a sampling from a bonafide Gen-X- er and longtime Nirvana fan, I recruited a friend of mine, who brought over his Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs CD, generally agreed to be one of the best sounding (pre-Blu-ray, anyway) releases of In Utero, and we sampled both it and the Blu-ray disc right after each other. My "Nirvana friend" almost instantly pointed to what he felt was a somewhat stronger low end, especially with regard to bass and percussion, but also to some of Cobain's primal growls. To my ears, there was in fact a difference—albeit a relatively incremental one. The audio Blu-ray offers a slightly more crisp accounting of some of the searing guitar work on the album as well as what I perceived to be a slightly less muddy accounting of Dave Grohl's drums. As fans of the band know, In Utero often features absolutely monolithic massed voicings in the low to midranges, and this audio Blu-ray offers a rather spacious and surprisingly transparent rendering of this aspect. As with all previous releases of In Utero, the mix intentionally buries Cobain's voice at times, though his screams of agony in at least a couple of songs penetrate the onslaught and seem to reach out and grab the listener by force, insisting that he be paid attention to. One of the nicest things about this disc is its impeccable dynamic range. Even cranking your home theater system "up to 11" won't create any distortion, and the quieter tunes, like "Heart- Shaped Box", retain an almost aching intimacy.

I frankly heard very little difference between the LPCM, DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD tracks, though if I were pressed to mention something, to my ears it sounded like the LPCM 2.0 track has the edge in terms of forceful midrange, but the differences are frankly negligible in my opinion.

Nirvana: In Utero Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this audio Blu-ray.

Nirvana: In Utero Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's a lot to like—maybe even love—about this audio Blu-ray, but I bet a lot of Nirvana fans are going to be asking (unwittingly parroting about the furthest artist from Kurt Cobain, Miss Peggy Lee), "Is that all there is?" The album tracks sound spectacular, but some at least may have wished for a bit more content here. Considering the brouhaha over the allegedly compressed remaster of Nevermind which outraged fans a while back, at least the good news here is that the sound is fresh, vibrant and incredibly visceral, probably the best this album has ever sounded. Despite the lack of bonus content, In Utero comes Highly recommended.