eMusic Review
The best-selling Sub Pop album ever pulled the entire label up along with it in the crazy months after Nirvana's follow-up Nevermind transformed the rock landscape. Bleach isn't the monument that Nevermind was (the album was famously recorded for less than the cost of a decent guitar, and it kind of shows), but it's a fascinating document of what Kurt Cobain wanted to be and what he couldn't help being — a scuzzy punk noisenik with a pop jones he couldn't hide. There's a lot of thud and bluster here — "Paper Cuts" is all dissonant irritation — alongside some terrific, mammoth Led Zep/Aerosmith riffs, like the one that powers "School." "About a Girl" was supposedly inspired by the Beatles, which was not the world's most uncommon reference point unless you happened to have been a shaggy-haired Flipper fan in 1989; even better is Nirvana's first single, "Love Buzz," a cover of an obscurity by the '60s Dutch pop band Shocking Blue. Cobain growls it like a threat, but he knew it was a promise.
