Review of "With The Lights Out" Q Magazine - December 2004. By Sylvie Simmons (thanks to Tyler for the transcript) "Finally it's here. After years of rumour, conjecture and intra-band strife, the Nirvana boxset has arrived. And there's plenty of it: nigh on 80 tracks in total, three quarters of those previously unavailable. Arranged chronologically over four discs, your money also buys a 60-page illustrated book, an annotated time-line, liner notes by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and a gatefolded box made from heat-sensitive material that changes colour when you touch it. Initially, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselie were looking at the project as a way of "personal closure". That was around the time of Nevermind's 10th anniversary, when they were on a war footing with Courtney Love - then, even collating their unreleased Nirvana tapes was the limit of their ambition. They couldn't have envisaged something this extravagant. Now, thanks to a peace accord with Love, the tracklist has been swollen with the boxes of cassettes Cobain squirrelled away from 1987 to 1994, the year he wrote that suicide note saying he hadn't "felt the excitement for years". Excitement is the best thing going for the earliest tracks; only historians and serious fans would want to play the messy Led Zeppelin cover, Heartbreaker (from Nirvana's debut show), more than once; they were glorying - as Cobain sings in White Lace And Strange, one of three cuts from 1987 - in being "young and stupid". Though Cobain often spoke of fusing Black Sabbath with The Beatles, Zeppelin seem to hold more sway here, from the Raunchola/Moby Dick medley to the old blues covers. The three remarkable Leadbelly songs feature Cobain and Novoselic with Mark Pickerel of Screaming Trees, who shares drumming credits on this disc with Aaron Burckhard, Dale Crover and Chad Channing. As the set progresses, the trademark Nirvana sound begins to take shape. Check out the Clean Up Before She Comes demo's, layered vocals over bony guitar - it's where we first hear that blend of dopey ennui, throat-ripping anger and melodic fragility in Cobain's voice. But he's still finding his range, so primitive gospel song They Hung Him On A Cross sees him channelling Johnny Cash. Elsewhere, on the daft Beans, he's channelling cartoon rockers The Chipmunks. Where CD 1 opened with Cobain's voice cobwebby, barely discernible, CD2's first five tracks has it upfront. By now, his songwriting is increasingly sure-footed and his vocals audibly growing in confidence. He has range now, melodic and engaging on Opinion, energised and raw on Lithium, keening like an old Appalachian country-blues singer over an acoustic guitar on Where Did You Sleep Last Night. It's not all good: The Velvet Underground cover Here She Comes Now sounds more bored than the original. But as we enter the '90s, it's Cobain's songwriting which starts to bewitch, featured here in alternate, live and demo versions. The real hair-on-end moment is the first rehearsal of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Even in foetal state, you know it will change the face of rock. It will also, of course, change Cobain. By CD3, the nosedive has begun. Nirvana are a phenomenon, and Cobain just wants to crawl back into the womb. Instead, he's a father - that's baby Frances crying on the second Rape Me - and a man losing control; the tempo veers all over the place on his solo Pennyroyal Tea. The Vaseline's Jesus Doesn't Want Me... is dark, drugged. Very Ape sounds like he's been tied to a hamster's wheel. But there are moments too when the thrill of creation, of simply being part of a band, glares through: the 10-minute jam Scentless Apprentice, for example. The DVD underlines that spirit. There's wobbly footage of rehearsals in Novoselic's mum's living room, and wobblier footage from the Bleach tour, the band carrying bedrolls to sleep together on the floor. There's an '89 in-store, a gig opening for Mudhoney, In Bloom's cheap video and a show at which in total silence they announce a new song: ... Teen Spirit. The ending - the band a studio in Rio, Cobain on drums, doing a straight version of cheesy ballad Seasons In The Sun - will bring tears to your eyes. Or make you buy a guitar.