Tag Archives: in utero

#1176: Nirvana – Serve the Servants

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While thinking about what I was gonna write for this song, its chorus just kept on repeating itself in my head. It’s a funny thing about ‘Serve the Servants’. This was the opener to Nirvana’s In Utero, the album consciously made, at the behest of main man Kurt Cobain, to sound a lot more unpolished and possess a rawer feel to counter the “overproduction” of Nevermind. And sure, it gets that theme going from the first second with the sound of a drumstick count-in and that blast of an opening chord. But once its rhythm and near-groove properly sets in with melody in tow, it’s just as catchy and much of a tune as anything that came on the album before. It’s not the most massive of changes. That shock really comes in on the song after.

I first listened to In Utero just over 11 years ago. It might have even been during this month in 2013. That was a special year for the album, ’cause it marked 20 years since it was originally released and there was a whole special 20th anniversary release that was coming around the corner at the time. My take on it? I like it a bunch. It’s probably my favourite Nirvana LP. Nevermind will always been seen as the outright classic, but I just prefer a lot of the songs on Utero. The majority of the first half of the former has been overplayed over the years to the point where I can go long points without having to listen to it. Plus, might be a little silly, but there’s something about Nevermind that’s a little too perfect to me. It’s the little oddities and things left in on In Utero that I’ve always felt have made it the more rewarding listen.

‘Serve the Servants’ is a tune that I’ve never really been able to figure out. It appears to be about a lot of different things all brought together. Cobain touches upon his own boredom with the music business, getting older and the pain that comes with it, relationship issues with his dad and references the Salem witch trials. So, maybe it’s fair to say it’s a bit of an autobiographical thing going on with a totally different subject put in to throw the listener off. Maybe it’s all just words Cobain put together to sound good. Too bad he can’t tell us now. But it’s always been an engaging tune to hear. In comparison to the power chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Servants’ rolls along with this odd riff which usually shouldn’t work but very much does. Cobain sings louder in the verses compared to the choruses where he’s nearly mumbling. The solo’s a trip and doesn’t just follow the vocal melody of the verse, and at 2:42, something I’ve just noticed, someone flat-out coughs in the middle of it. You gotta dig that sort of stuff.

#1025: Nirvana – Pennyroyal Tea

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First time I would have heard Nirvana’s ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ was when I got ’round to listening to In Utero in full for the first time around 2013. ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, from the same album, I’d known for a long time – but that specific year had some weight into my decision to getting round to the whole record so late, as it was the 20th anniversary of its release. The second half of In Utero is where things go off the deep end a little bit, but in the middle of the whole anti-accessible aesthetic that it goes for comes one of the album’s most accessible tracks in ‘Pennyroyal’.

Had Cobain not chosen to go out the way he did in 1994, ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ would have been the next single from Utero to get the music video treatment, the chart placement, the radio airplay. All of the usual. Once you hear it, you can easily understand why. The quiet verses consist of nothing but two lines, wasting no time on each iteration to emphatically transition into the cathartic choruses where the instrumentation is cranked up to eleven. Kurt Cobain belts out those long drawn out notes in ’em, and with all of that together he had made another “grunge” classic. Obviously, it’s never reached the heights of nearly everything that preceded on Nevermind, but those who know know just what a special song this is.

Plain and simply, it’s a about a very, very depressed person (most likely autobiographical) who drinks pennyroyal tea to at least try and somewhat numb the pain and carries out other mundane activities (listen to Leonard Cohen music, taking antacids and drinking warm milk). All of which really don’t help in any way and make the narrator feel even more sorry for themselves than they already do on a regular basis. After the last line in the last chorus is sung, the tempo slows and slows with Cobain quietly groaning with each cymbal crash as if each hit is slowly taking the life out of him. Pretty telling way to really get across the great exhaustion of the narrator in question. As it’s maybe agreed that it’s Cobain singing about himself, it really puts the whole song into perspective.

My iPod #504: Nirvana – Heart-Shaped Box

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So this song may or may not be about Courtney Love’s vagina. Meh. If it is, it’s still a damn good song about one. A classic that doesn’t need much discussion. You must have heard it, that’s the only reason I say this.

“Heart-Shaped Box” was the first single released from Nirvana’s third and last album In Utero in 1993. Its music video was one of the main reasons why I immediately liked the track. Although it was mildly comedic watching Kurt Cobain going insane and lunging at the camera with the widest and bluest eyes with every “HEY” and “WAIT”, it was fascinating seeing the guy that bit more close and personal in one of their music videos. I can only imagine how people felt viewing it when it came out for the first time. The Ku-Klux-Clan child, the old man on the crucifix with the Santa hat, the fake fetuses hanging of the tree branches… the singing crows……. I am not making this up. It’s too much.

As for the music… well. It is rough. That is the one word I think sums up this, and the rest of the album, very well.