People have criticized 'Nevermind' rightfully for being nothing more than a generic power pop release. I would agree. This is not a Steel Pole Bath Tub, Melvins or The Jesus Lizard release of heavy noise-rock, that grunge was really about. But who cares. It's 'Nevermind', you see. And never have a good pop album been so popular since The Beatles. Or something in that vein...

Yep, the production is slick and Nirvana's sound is totally watered sound. Who cares? This album never defined any 'new' sound, but it broke down the gates to the undeground and defined a generation. And that's what matters.

They brought the music back to masses, like The Ramones; at least for a while (if you know what the fuck I'm talking about). And your normal guy and your normal girl could form their own 'grunge' (as 'Nevermind', ironically enough now was called) band. The 'hair metal'-era was over. And thank god. It's good liking cheesy bands and not being all that tasteful. But hair metal... yiiirrkk... Keep your Mötley Crüe, Warrant and Poison for your self, although it's so cool they were make-up and were cocky? If you should listen to some hair metal, go for Hanoi Rocks, because the kinda rocked, in some way...

'Nevermind' is a mixer of the underground poppy punk-bands of Pixies, Hüsker Dü and R.E.M., while having a little Cheap Trick, Buzzcocks, the Ramones and The Beatles thrown in.
All the Black Sabbath, Melvins and Black Flag metal sludge is almost gone, the arty noise experimentation of Sonic Youth and The Butthole Surfers is almost completely gone, too.
Only the pop-tunes are left back, played in a, at least for radio, very raw way and with the good old distortion pedal thrown in. And what a tunesmith Mr. Cobain is. The last great legend, we have had. 27 like Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin and, please, don't forget him, D. Boon.

We all know the teen-anthem: SLTS. And you have your In Bloom, Come as You Are and Lithium. Just to sum the greatest things up. It would be pointless to sum the songs up, while they, to be honest, fit into the exact same genre: punky power-pop. But forget Green Day, cause they suck. This is good stuff, with nice melodies, but of course you all know it.
No idea why I wrote this, cause they're a million of reviews out there for this album, but I would just honor this band, which I personally feel is the greatest ever (don't shoot me...) and this record that brought me into rock.

And I'm not going to talk about the impact of this, cause it influenced both bad and good things, but for a moment, it brought rock'n'roll back to life. Though it's a bit of a cliché.

Au revoir

After the messy country-punk masterpiece 'Meat Puppets II' and the truely insane and surrealistic hardcore punk of their first album, one of the best bands from the american underground came up with this. Another masterpiece.

But as far away 'Meat Puppets II' was from 'Meat Puppets', as far away is 'Up on the Sun' from 'Meat Puppets II'.

The guitar playing is kept in a sparkling, very clean tone, with beautiful arpeggio and the vocals are the monotone signature voice that Kirkwood would later be associated with... sort of.
And what about the album sound? This sounds like the Grateful Dead (the psychedelic folk), Television (the arty, clean psych-punk), Neil Young (the heartfelt melodies) and Funkadelic (for the funk overtones).

This is a great record: classic rock, classical-inspired instrumental, soothing funk-rock, pop-rock, psychedelic country-rock, noodling folk-rock, happy funk-punk, gloomy funk-punk, complex country-punk, folk-arpeggio instrumental, psychedelic post-punk, weird hard rock.
All done in a simplitic, soothing, fantastic way with very wise interplay between the three instruments.
A 'must-buy' for everyone interessted in the american underground of the 80's.

I actually find this album quite good. I'm not heavily into prog-rock, but I like King Crimson a fair amount. And I would like to check an album out.
My father bought me this one... I guess it has something to do with its title... LOL (I hate that expression).
But this has nothing to do with beat music. And it's okay.

King Crimson had with Discipline change direction from complex prog-rock and went for a Talking Heads-influenced rhytmic, avantgarde, new wavey (minimalistic) approach to rock.
But this is still fairly complex (as you could imagine).

"Neal and Jack and Me" is actually a quite straight ahead rocker with silly, overblown lyrics and is quite good. The repetition (don't know if the word is correct) of it's title in the last part and with te pretentious singing is just too much for me.
"Heartbeat" is a nice little pop/rock gem, with 'psychedelic' bachward guitar soloing.
"Sartori in Tangier" is a pure genius imstrumental with fantastic rhytm, almost dance-like (for people with intelligent feet), and there's some nice avantgarde thing over the frippetronics (or whatever that guy call them). Covered later by Primus, I think.
"Waiting Man" is nice mechanic, hypnotic finger picking with quite good vocals.
"Neurotica" is a fairly aggressive and that's cool. Fast, pretentious (but this time also funny), almost spit out lyrics going on a jazzy backbeat and with a middle section that in some way reminds me of Alice in Chans vocalist (wonder what his name is?).
"Two Hands" is kind of awful. Hate the voice, hate the lyrics. Pretending to be passionate too much here, I think.
"Howler" I really don't remember. Truely.
"Requiem" is antoher instrumental, but not as good as "Sartori in Tangier".

I would give it 7 out of 10.