In Utero (album) - Background

Background

Nirvana broke into the musical mainstream with its major label debut, Nevermind, in 1991. Despite modest sales estimates—the band's record company, DGC Records, forecast that 50,000 copies would be sold—Nevermind became a huge commercial success, selling millions of copies and popularizing the Seattle grunge movement and alternative rock in general. However, all three members of Nirvana—singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl—later expressed dissatisfaction with the sound of the album, citing its production as too polished. Early in 1992, Cobain told Rolling Stone that he was sure that the band's next album would showcase "both of the extremes" of its sound, saying "it'll be more raw with some songs and more candy pop on some of the others. It won't be as one-dimensional ". Cobain wanted to start work on the album in the summer of 1992. However, the band was unable to since Cobain and his bandmates lived in different cities, and the singer and his wife Courtney Love were expecting the birth of their daughter Frances Bean. DGC had hoped to have a new album by the band ready for a late 1992 holiday season release; since work on it proceeded slowly, the label released the compilation album Incesticide in December 1992.

In a Melody Maker interview published in July 1992, Cobain told the English journalist Everett True he was interested in recording with Jack Endino (who had produced the group's 1989 debut album Bleach) and Steve Albini (former frontman of the noise rock band Big Black and producer for various indie releases). Cobain said he would then choose the best material from the sessions for inclusion on the group's next album. In October 1992, Nirvana recorded several songs (mainly as instrumentals) during a demo session with Endino in Seattle; many of these songs would later be re-recorded for In Utero. Endino recalled that the band did not ask him to produce its next record, but noted that the band members constantly debated working with Albini. The group recorded another set of demos while on tour in Brazil in January 1993. One of the recordings from this session, the long improvisational track "Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip", was included as a hidden track on non-US copies of In Utero.

Nirvana ultimately chose Albini to record its third album. Albini had a reputation as a principled and opinionated individual in the American independent music scene. While there was speculation that the band chose Albini to record the album due to his underground credentials, Cobain told Request magazine in 1993, "For the most part I wanted to work with him because he happened to produce two of my favorite records, which were Surfer Rosa and Pod ." Inspired by those albums, Cobain wanted to utilize Albini's technique of capturing the natural ambiance of a room via the usage and placement of several microphones, something previous Nirvana producers had been averse to trying. Months before the band had even approached Albini about the recording, rumors circulated that he was slated to record the album. Albini sent a disclaimer to the British music press denying involvement, only to get a call from Nirvana's management a few days later about the project. Although he considered Nirvana to be "R.E.M. with a fuzzbox" and "an unremarkable version of the Seattle sound", Albini told Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad he accepted because he felt sorry for the band members, whom he perceived to be "the same sort of people as all the small-fry bands I deal with", at the mercy of their record company. Before the start of recording sessions, the band sent Albini a tape of the demos it had made in Brazil. In return, Albini sent Cobain a copy of the PJ Harvey album Rid of Me to give him an idea of what the studio where they would record at sounded like.