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"RAPE ME"

If you want to feel old (or young, depending on if you were born in 1993), Nirvana's last studio album, In Utero, is 20-years-old right around now.  I find this rather confusing, because in some ways, it seems like yesterday I first put it on - and was first repelled.  For few albums seemed so rebarbative at the time, on first listen.  Of course, eventually, this unlovely album has come to be seen a masterwork.

It really is probably the most important indie album an American band has ever created, and so cleverly fuses The Beatles, Pixies, and other, grunge ideals, that it becomes it own new style.  And it has never been bettered - never even really aped, to any extent, successfully.

There are several songs of genius on the album - tracks 3 through 7 are all classics; as well as tracks 9 and 12.  So, seven great, timeless songs, and five songs that disturb this excellence, aural challenges - and these other five are not so bad in themselves, either, in retrospect - just simply angrier, or louder, or more cacaphonic.  In Utero, with its scenes of violence, cancer, rape, revenge, anger, and madness - is also the album of lyric melody and lyric wit; it has stood the test of time; one wonders: are there any albums from 2013 that will, so confidently?
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