Nirvana (3.5 stars)
With the Lights Out
Flat out, if you aren't a hard-core Nirvana fan, don't buy this. Instead, take the cash and buy every Nirvana disc you don't have. You'll do better; from Bleach to From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, they all offer a more enjoyable and coherent listening experience for the average fan. But if you have them all and it isn't enough, not even close, then the most intense, meaningful and important band of the '90s has coughed open a grungy time capsule for you.
With the Lights Out culls B-sides, work tapes, acoustic demos, concert recordings and other oddities over three audio discs, with a DVD of concert footage, rehearsals and some lesser-known videos. The overwhelming majority of this material has never been officially released, though much of it has been widely circulated on file-sharing downloads and available on bootlegs.
In almost every case, the audio quality has been vastly upgraded. One exception is the brilliant, unreleased song "Opinion," which has a glitch here not heard on the acoustic radio performance bootleg that appears to have been the source. While there is a lot of great music, much of it is still in the formative stages, and the payoff lies elsewhere. It's good to hear how Kurt Cobain's solo acoustic of "Rape Me" morphed into the full band demo. But if you don't already own In Utero, you aren't going to get the payoff—the finished song—here.
This everything-and-the-kitchen sink anthology is all about the pleasures of feasting on the scraps. While a true fanatic may be giddy to hear the future gods of grunge muddle through Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" at their very, very first show in 1987, even if you named your kid Kurt, you won't want to listen to it twice.
The Donnas (3 stars)
Gold Medal
The Donnas are in an interesting place. The all-female quartet got its start as a bit of a gimmick, aping the Ramones by giving themselves all the same first name and playing simplistic, two-minute punk tunes about making out in backseats, huffing glue and taunting rival girls. They were all in high school when their first album came out, and their music reflected their immaturity.
In 2002, the band reached the apex of its booze-and-boys aesthetic with its major-label debut, Spend the Night. Now in their 20s, the Donnas are looking for a new direction, and Gold Medal finds them in soul-searching mode. The lyrics are less biting, less punny and less dirty. Several songs go on well past the three-minute mark. Guitarist Allison Robertson has developed the most, delivering meaty, distinctive riffs on songs like "Don't Break Me Down" and "It's So Hard," and several scorching guitar solos. The Donnas have always had an affinity for classic rock, and on Gold Medal they sound far more like Kiss and Aerosmith than the Ramones.
The main problem with Gold Medal is that the Donnas haven't quite figured out who they want to be yet, and still cling to their old image while exploring new sounds. It remains to be seen whether the record is a first step toward a more interesting, mature band, or the last gasps of a novelty act that ran out of ideas.