"All Apologies"

Nirvana
(DGC, 1993)

Did you not notice he was saying goodbye? Were you not paying attention? This is Kurt Cobain's final recessional: breaking down his mighty chords into a skeletal pattern beneath first simple confessions (whose power couldn't be dimmed even by Christian-rock nitwits DC Talk's changing "everyone is gay" to "Jesus is the way"), then sneering accusations, self-laceration, and compressed poetic surrealism. You can hear him crawling up the umbilical noose, from an underwater baby to a fetus in utero to nothingness, nonexistence, nirvana.

-- Douglas Wolk