#2098 VA - Whatever Nevermind

Like the recent In Utero tribute, this goes song by song in order, and has about the same ratio of hits and misses.

And like that comp it leads off with a song that suggest a slowedup, more adventurous take than the rest of the comp can deliver. Too bad Young Widows' Smells Like Teen Spirit never really works - it's slowed and minimized and Sonic Youth dissonantized, but it doesn't use that tweaking to arrive at the original's thrust in a new way. It's just fucked for its own sake.

See also Kylesa's Come As You Are. Playing a song slowly doesn't count as reinventing it. I can put on Nevermind at the wrong RPM all by myself if that was what I really wanted (take note Witch House and Chillwave, if you're still limping along out there).

Just to show you can screw it up both ways: Toche fills the gap with a needless, rote recreation of In Bloom.

On the other side of the coin: is it a coincidence that the bands I came to hear did the best? The middle section of the album's by far the strongest:
 - Cave In takes the already high-notched Breed up a notch
 - Boris shows how the big slowdown can be done right, taking Lithium's underlying, smoldering madness all the way down the hole
 - Personal favs White Reaper win the MVP, kicking Territorial Pissings up a dozen notches, going full hardcore, with their signature synth wheeling bringing the perfect pop-punk swingback

As with In Utero, In Tribute: nothing here that's going to displace the original, but there's enough reinvention to justify a once-through if you're even a casual Nirvana fan, or fan of any of the comp's admirable lineup of noisy motherfuckers 3.5/5