10 Perfect Indie Albums Of The 1990s
3. Bleach - Nirvana
Having Nirvana confined to the sole genre of grunge just feels wrong. Even though they weren't with us for very long, Kurt Cobain's songwriting prowess extended to all different forms of music, from pop sounding stuff on Nevermind to some of the most feral forms of art rock on In Utero later down the line. If you insisted on Nirvana staying as a grunge band though, Bleach is still a damn good time regardless.
Being their first major release on Sub Pop, the recordings for this record were apparently dirt cheap, made for only 600 bucks over the course of a few days. You can't say that the band hadn't honed their craft though, with Kurt already having an impressive knack for songwriting on tracks like About a Girl. That's the Nirvana of the future though...the current Nirvana was a lot more furious.
Compared to the other alternative leaning bands of the time, there's a lot more heavy guitars on this record than you might expect, with songs like Blew and Paper Cuts sounding so sludgy that they're practically the cousin of stoner rock. They didn't forget the punk attitude though, since Negative Creep lives and dies on its frantic pace and wild structure. Nirvana were already a phenomenal band here, but with just the right amount of polish, they were about to become amazing.