NIRVANA

With The Lights Out

It starts, appropriately enough, with the howl of feedback. Above the crowd noise and tape hiss you can just about make out a single muffled cry: 'Heartbreaker!'. Seconds later another voice - Krist perhaps? - shouts back, 'I don't know how to play it!'. But it's too late: Kurt's already tearing into the riff, gleefully bending each note, leading his bandmates against their will into the most hopelessly shambolic Led Zeppelin cover you'll ever hear in your life.

So begins 'With The Lights Out', the mammoth box set of ultra-rare Nirvana material that fans of the band feared may never surface. Monumental in scope - 81 tracks (68 of them previously unavailable), set to retail for £40 - it's perhaps even more comprehensive than internet rumours suggested, featuring a handful of tracks so obscure that only the most ardent of bootleg obsessives will even have heard of them, let alone have any idea what they sound like.

Just glance at the track-listing. 'Opinion', 'White Lace And Strange' and 'Blandest'; to hear these songs is to unlock an enthralling secret history, a parallel universe where Kurt Cobain is not an iconic prohet-poet - but rather a shit-kicking country singer ('Ain't It A Shame'); a helium-voiced stoner having a laugh on his four-track ('Beans'); and a fallible songwriter capable of penning shapeless dirges like 'Curmudgeon' or 'Sappy'.

Indeed, perhaps the primary value of this unearthed material lies in the way it humanizes Kurt. We hear him consistently fluff solos, strain for high notes and forget lyrics. Early efforts, like 'Anorexorcist' - a sludgy workout recorded in 1987, when he was just 20 - are characterised by inexpert guitar playing and thin, weedy vocals. Even on later songs, like the quirky country-blues number 'Do Re Mi', his voice still strays painfully out of tune.

What's fascinating, though, is the way these embryonic demos foreshadow the brilliance to come. A rough pre-'Bleach' track called 'If You Must' finds Kurt sneering 'Is it me... or my attitude?' He's clearly formulating his own lyrical voice here, fumbling towards the outsider discourse that would soon become the corner-stone of grunge. Elsewhere, the way 'Help Me I'm Hungry' seems to change gear when it reaches the chorus prefigures, albeit in abstract form, the melodic genius of 'Nevermind'.

Moments like these challenge the accepted chronology of Kurt's development. It's often assumed that the downtuned punk-metal of 'Bleach' was all he was capable of that time; that his gift for pop hooks only started to blossom in 1990. However, Disc One reveals that 'Polly' and 'About A Girl' were both already written by 1988, suggesting he was deliberately suppressing his melodic tendencies (producer Jack Endino claims Kurt was nervous about even including 'About A Girl' on 'Bleach', fearing record label Sub Pop might think it too 'pop').

Such insights make the solo acoustic tracks the most interesting aspect of 'With The Lights Out'. Be warned, though: many of these sparse demos are unutterably bleak - especially on the third disc, where Kurt's mental collapse can be all too easily traced. By the time you get to 'You Know You're Right', it's barely recognisable as rock music. Rather, the nearest reference point is the skeletal blues of Robert Johnson. Like those '30s recordings, Kurt's voice sounds frail and fearful, each cracked note bearing witness to some nameless inward horror.

This is, make no mistake, remorselessly uneasy listening. While these songs document Kurt's creative awakening, they also chart a hellish descent into depression and psychosis. Indeed, only the DVD - with its intimate footage of early shows and rehearsal sessions - could be classed as 'entertainment' as such. But then that's not really the point. 'With The Lights Out' isn't so much about music as is it about the weight of history. It provides an unparalelled insight into the creative mind of a towering giant of popular music - and as such is a work of singular, epochal significance. - Luke Lewis - Kerrang!