Sliver is a collection of highlights from Nirvana’s 3-CD box set, With the Lights Out. It presents a timeline of Kurt Cobain’s work at its rawest through demos, live tracks and outtakes as well a progression of his talents as a singer, a songwriter and a guitar player. The liner notes have great quotes and provide a history of the recordings sessions.
It also offers three tracks that don’t appear in the box set: “Come As You Are” (boom box version), “Sappy” (1990 studio demo) and the earliest recording from an 18–year-old Cobain, “Spank Thru” (1985 Fecal Matter demo) when he along with Dale Crover on drums and bass were called Fecal Matter.
You can hear the first public appearance of the band at a house party. They cover Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” although the track begins with Cobain yelling that he doesn’t know how to play it, which appears to be a half-truth. On 9/25/90, a year after Nirvana released Bleach, Cobain performs two solo, acoustic numbers at KAOS in Olympia, Washington, “Opinion” and “Lithium.”
Dave Grohl joins the band during the Nevermind sessions and handles the drumming on all subsequent performances. The album closes out with tracks from In Utero and beyond.
“Heart-Shaped Box” (band demo) has different lyrics and musical structure from its recording in January 1993 when it was originally titled “Heart-Shaped Coffin.” The opening verse was:
She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been buried in a heart-shaped box for weeks
You done undid my magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could catch your cancer when I am sick
And was changed to:
She eyes me like a pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks
I was drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn back
The last verse in the released version, which contains one of the song’s most vivid lines, “Cut myself on angel's hair and baby's breath”/ wasn’t in the demo version.
Another illustration of Cobain’s work on a song is the two versions of “Rape Me”, recorded at home and with the band where a baby can be heard crying throughout. Is it an effect or maybe Frances Bean? The home demo has a lot of lyrics and ideas that create a much darker story for the narrator. The band demo has been gutted and closely resembles the released version. It leaves the listener curious what went into Cobain’s editorial decisions, but like many things related to him it will remain a mystery.
Article comments
1 - Eric Berlin
Wow, great piece, El B. I love "Opinion," really shows Cobain's muscular yet soothing acoustic side well. I remember reading an old Rolling Stone interview in which Cobain expressed a great admiration for R.E.M., which I'm sure "shocked" some but I found very encouraging as it connected two of my all-time (to this day) favorite musical groups.
The final song on the not very interesting DVD that comes with the original Box Set is a cover of "Seasons in the Sun," and man, it raised the hair on my arms: dark and beautiful and sad and gorgeous it was. I'd like to think that was the direction the band was heading in, along with a host of other sounds and sensations and places that we're all left to wonder about forever.
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