Nirvana: Incesticide [HIP-O RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

This reissue comes on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. Incesticide reached No. 39 on the Billboard 200, went platinum, and AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called "Aneurysm" perhaps the greatest single song the group ever recorded.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Sub Pop was sitting on a stack of early Nirvana tapes, and copies were already doing the rounds among fans in rough, hissy form. So Sub Pop sold the recordings to Geffen, the band agreed to a proper album by Christmas 1992, and Kurt Cobain took full control of the artwork, painting the cover himself under the name Kurdt Kobain.

It lands between Nevermind and In Utero and pulls together the 1990 single "Sliver" and its flip side "Dive," BBC radio sessions, demos and outtakes. Four different drummers turn up (Chad Channing, Dan Peters, Dale Crover and Dave Grohl). "Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun" pay tribute to The Vaselines, "Turnaround" covers Devo, and "Beeswax," "Downer" and "Mexican Seafood" go right back to the band's first demo tape in 1988. The BBC takes of "Been a Son" and "(New Wave) Polly" show a band having a ball with its own songs.

Geffen barely promoted it, worried about Nirvana overload, and it still sold half a million copies in two months. The plastic duck on the back belonged to art director Robert Fisher, and to the best of our knowledge it never asked for royalties.

Also at Kops: more Nirvana on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On DGC / Sub Pop, a reissue of the 1992 compilation.