Weekly > Reviews
Nirvana - Sliver The Best Of The Box
Lets get the obvious thing about this album out of the way straight away shall we, this is without a doubt an unashamed attempt by Geffen to cash in on the legacy of the band just before Christmas, yes similar as they did last year.
That can’t be the overriding thing we judge this album on though, because lets be honest, we live in a pretty consumer based world at the moment. One that people in all walks of life are all too happy to exploit, so record companies are no diferent if it means they can extract some hard earned cash out of you the music buyer, just before Christmas. It’s not a new thing is it, lets be honest you probably get 90% of all the Best Of albums released in a year, coming out in October and November, this has always happened and will continue to happen.
No the thing we’ve really got to judge this on more than anything, is the quality of what’s on offer to you when you actually put the disc in the machine and listen to it. This in itself causes a few problems as well; a Nirvana completist is likely to give this album a higher mark out of ten than the casual music fan on the street who owns Nevermind and nothing else, so don’t read too much into what I’ve given this.
To give you a bit of background from the perspective I’m coming from with this review, I’m a fan of Nirvana but wouldn’t put them in my top twenty groups if you told me I could only listen to twenty bands for the rest of my life. That said I own all the studio albums and my favourite Nirvana album is probably the MTV Unplugged album, the reason being that it seemed to show a different side to the band and the songs, the emotions within the song and particularly in Kurt Cobains voice came to the fore in that setting.
- Nirvana
- Sliver The Best Of The Box (2005)
- Category: Album
- Label: Geffen Records
- Reviewed by: Kev
- Published on: 11 Nov 2005
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
Weblinks
Add to favouritesSo what of Sliver, the first thing you need to know is that it’s basically the ‘Best Of The Box’, a collection of some of the best moments from last years ‘With The Lights Out’ box set that collected together unreleased material, demo’s and alternate takes as well as the odd live track. Cunningly the record label have ‘found’ three extra tracks to add on that have been previously unreleased, meaning if you are a completist this immediately becomes necessary buy.
The actual tracks on this album really do vary in quality, as you would expect from an album of this nature. While some of the alternate takes and early versions are a fantastic insight into the recording process, a number of tracks do come across as exactly what they are, demo versions that are missing that little something that usually makes a Nirvana track so special.
Highlights of the album for me were the solo acoustic tracks that see Kurt and a guitar at their intimate best on Lithium, Rape Me and Opinion, the opening ‘new’ track Spank Thru (Faecal Matter) and Old Age which is a Nevermind outtake. From a big Nirvana fans perspective things like Heartbreaker which were recorded at their first ever show and new tracks like Sappy are probably the reason you’ll buy this. Either way whatever your reasons, this album doesn’t do anything to harm the bands reputation, I’m just not sure what the band would make of this constant churning out of material?
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We waffle on enough without letting you lot do it too. Comments are limited to 300 characters.
Try and keep on topic if you can and no insulting the contributors. All hate mail can be addressed to Kev.