Sub Pop

Melody Maker - March 18th, 1989.

Seattle: Rock City

By Everett True

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Basically, this is the real thing. No rock star contrivance, no intellectual perspective, no master plan for world domination. You're talking about four guys in their early twenties from rural Washington who wanna rock, who, if they weren't doing this, would be working in a supermarket or lumber yard, or fixing cars. Kurdt Kobain is a great tunesmith, although still a relatively young songwriter. He wields a riff with passion. Nirvana deal a lot with Calvin Johnson (Beat Happening) type themes - innocence and the repression of innocence. Nirvana songs treat the banal and pedestrian with a unique slant.

"We grew up in Aberdeen. It was real scary; redneck, helltown, backwoods, like a village or a big city for lumberjacks" says bassist Chris Novoselic. "You see Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider talking about Rednecks? About how if they see something different they don't go running scared, they get dangerous. Aberdeen's like that. But they were so bone-headed, why shouldn't we be different from them?"