This soundtrack to recent documentary Montage Of Heck is a grab-bag of amateurish home recordings incorporating such novel effects as a phone ringing in the background, and the singer saying “bass part” to indicate that, were a bass player present, here’s where he’d step in.
What makes the album remarkable, and perhaps historically significant, is that said singer is Kurt Cobain, and that the 31 fragments assembled here represent his earliest musical efforts. And just as Montage Of Heck director Brett Morgan found a new way of telling Cobain’s story, moving beyond Behind The Music cliche by drawing on intimate home movies and family interviews, so this scrappy accompaniment sheds further light on the creative process of Generation X’s martyr-in-chief.
Cobain’s talent is obvious, even when he’s mucking about, as on opener ‘The Yodel Song’’, which, as per its billing, features the singer scatting a sequence of comedic intonations (at one point he threatens to go “full Swedish Chef ”). Elsewhere, embryonic renderings of ‘Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle’ and ‘Been A Son’ glint with the damaged shimmer of their definitive versions. There’s one cover, of The Beatles’ ‘And I Love Her’ – Cobain essentially reimagines it as fucked-up ur-Nirvana.
A deluge of Nirvana outtakes and demos is already available. Montage Of Heck nonetheless justifies its existence by offering a portrait of the artist as a (very) young man. The picture that emerges is often raw and messy. But there are reminders, too, that Cobain could be playful and throwaway. Overall, a worthwhile exercise.