Nevermind - Neoclassicism?!? In Nirvana?!?

1/23/11 – Nevermind (Nirvana)

When you are creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit.
-Miles Davis

Back in 1993 (or somewhere around there,) I remember our family hosting a foreign exchange student for the summer from France.  Hubert was a few years older than me, and was a pretty cool kid from what I remember.  Except for the fact that he smoked and listened to a lot of music that my mom dismissed at weird, and would then scowl at and move on.  I don’t know if it was my imagination or interpretation of what she said when she did things like that, but for some reason, I always associated a value judgment with my mom’s tastes in music; if she didn’t like something, it was all of the sudden “bad music.”  Perhaps it’s related to the fact that the radios around the house and cars were always set to contemporary Christian radio stations.  Perhaps it’s because she did the same thing with food… while dad just didn’t like peanut butter, mom didn’t like lima beans and they were “bad.”  At any rate, I digress.  There are two CD’s I remember hearing Hubert play over and over that summer as he shared my bedroom: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Nirvana’s Nevermind.

            With that in mind, I never listened to Nirvana much growing up, mostly in an adolescent attempt to appease my mom to some extent.  However, listening to this album now, I on some level or another already know all of it.  The melodies are familiar enough and the harmonies striking enough that I find them etched in my subconscious; perhaps moreso than some of the music I actively listened to those 18 years ago.  “Smells Like Teen Spirit” comes as no surprise, as it became a sort of anthem for my angsty teenage generation.  What does catch me off guard is how my musical understanding has changed since then.  There is some really good music here, and I either didn’t notice before, or at least wasn’t bold enough to admit.

I think, rather, I knew something was different about this music, and even though I didn’t understand it, I knew it worked somehow.  Putting on the analytical theory cap for a second (sorry Dad,) I begin to understand why.  There are no V chords in the whole piece, meaning the one chordal relationship that Western music theory is based around, V-I isn’t present.  Instead of a hierarchy of harmonies based on a circle of fifths, “Smells Like…” is based off a grouping of chords a third away.  Faure, Philip Glass, and other late romantics and contemporary composers have written in this style, but I’ve never seen it in the mainstream.  Likewise, the soft verses and loud refrains are a throwback to the terraced dynamics of the early Classical period – Haydn in particular.  I am enthralled – as Genesis tried to further rock music by mixing meters (a 20^th century convention) and interpolating Renaissance instrumentation to “elevate” rock music, Nirvana accomplished this lofty goal (both in my opinion and commercially) much better by embracing Neoclassicism.  But no one noticed, because the elements borrowed and integrated into their writing were so much more subtle.  (I know… not a word you hear used to describe Nirvana very often, right?)

“In Bloom” includes some of the same devices as above; the verses are a series of chords related by thirds; the only dominant chord is a secondary dominant (which resolves “correctly,”) and the same dynamic structures.  Continuing into “Come As You Are,” I start to wonder if there is a single V chord in the whole album.  This flies so far in the face of convention that I find it near impossible to dismiss as coincidence.

As a side note, as it appears I’m being too praiseworthy so far, I’ll take a second to mention how lackluster Cobain’s guitar skills are.  He has a good, even occasionally great sound, but from what I’ve read, most of this is due to the sublime vision and direction of the album’s producer, Butch Vig, not Cobain’s playing.  As a songwriter, great stuff.  As a singer and guitarist, good at best.  It seems the lion’s share of musical talent in the group came from Dave Grohl on drums.  As for Krist Novoselic on bass, he gets the job done, but doesn’t shine, per se.  Of course, few bassists really do.  Except Jaco. J

“Lithium” is the first tune to use the elusive dominant V chord, but even then, it doesn’t resolve as it would in standard Western harmony, going to a flat-VII chord before the I.  “Polly” stands out as the only acoustic offering on the CD, very soft and cool despite it’s dark lyrics and story.  “Territorial P*****gs” is the first track that I find not up to the standard set before.  It lacks the subtleties of most of the earlier songs, delving more toward “scream-o” vocals and a lack of restraint.  Fortunately, it’s the shortest on the album – 2:32 and it’s over.

The later tracks on the CD are as a whole less impressive as the first half.  “Drain You” features much of the same compositional tools, but lacks any kind of catchy hook.  The instrumental is worth listening to, though; a single chord drone in the bass, with some interesting harmonies above it.  “Lounge Act,” “Stay Away,” and “I’m on a Plain,” likewise follow the same trends as the previous tracks, but again, lack anything that truly stands out from the rest of the album.  “Something in the Way” provides a nice balance, incorporating some haunting cello lines to the mellow tune.

I have intentionally refrained from commenting on Cobain’s lyrics for a couple of reasons.  First off, a fair amount of them are unintelligible, somewhat intentionally.  Nirvana omitted them in the liner notes, and Kurt’s delivery isn’t clear more often than not.  Second of all, Cobain reportedly told Grohl during the compositional process that the lyrics were secondary to the music, always.  If their author was so quick to dismiss them, I don’t feel bad doing so as well.  On a similar note, I know I got more into the harmonic theory behind the writing here than I normally do.  Part of it is that I like this album and feel compelled to justify that.  It’s easy to say “I like this,” or “I don’t like this,” but it’s more difficult to be able to say why.  Either way –

“I like this.”

Tomorrow – Alfred Hitchcock: An Essential Collection (Bernard Herrmann)

Next week – Songs in A minor (Alicia Keys)