The release last year of the ‘lost’ ‘You Know You’re Right’ was something of a red herring for those who may think that the vaults are heaving with quality unreleased Nirvana songs. Sometimes it’s fascinating, but over the course of more than three hours and 81 songs it occasionally feels like you’re discovering secrets better left untold. Entire swathes of ‘With The Lights Out’ are so personal, it’s like peering into Kurt’s private journals and selfishly ripping out a page for yourself. People may have been clamouring for this stuff but, as with the recent publication of Kurt’s personal diaries, it should be questioned if many of the songs on ‘With The Lights Out’ should ever have been allowed into the public domain at all. So does the release of ‘With The Lights Out’ shed any new light on the Nirvana myth? Does it explain why it ended like it did? Does it add to, or take away from the cult of Kurt which has grown since his grisly suicide in April 1994? But was it a tortured genius accidentally caught in a moment of emotional nakedness, or a man known for mocking the public perception of his life taking the piss? Remember, just six months previously he had appeared at the Reading festival, in what was to be the band’s final UK show, in a wheelchair and white surgical gown. “If we did not have chemicals, you wouldn’t be writing my death certificate…” Halfway through the unreleased jam ‘The Other Improv’ – recorded at one of Nirvana’s last ever recording sessions, in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, as they worked out the songs that would become ‘In Utero’ – Kurt mumbles a confession.
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