Nirvana: With the lights out

(Herald rating: *****)

Kurt Cobain is singing to the wall. The Nirvana frontman always was an inward sort of a chap, wasn't he? But he sure made an impact. It's 1988 at a rehearsal at bass player Krist Novoselic's mum's house in Aberdeen, Washington State. Cobain stands at the front of the room with a set list stuck on the wall to his right, Novoselic flails round the room taking up the most space and Chad Channing _ the band's first drummer _ is a scruffy metronome at the back.

Some of the DVD footage on this new box set (including 81 tracks, on three CDs and one DVD) is shoddy. Hey, it was the grunge years, remember? But, during this never-seen-before rehearsal, when Cobain leaps into the air, knees bent, and falls straight to the ground, it's a sign of something special. For a man who is slight in stature, scruffy beyond repair and, much of the time, lacking a smile, there is something so powerful about him. Cobain has such a presence both physically and musically that you have to ask: Was it about him, or the band?

From the number of solo renditions on With the Lights Out it would be easy to say it was about him, but it also comes through from this collection that the throbbing passion of Channing, Novoselic and Grohl added to the power.

The 20 tracks on the DVD include numbers from Mrs Novoselic's place, various venues in Seattle, and the highlight, a raw and heavy, don't-mess-with-us type performance of Big Cheese at Rhino Records in Los Angeles in 1989.

As with the DVD, some of the 61 tracks on CD sound awful. Cobain had a tendency to resemble a cat in pain, and some of the 1987 demos and rehearsals are testament to this. But a good box set is about a journey and finding gems no one else has owned or heard. So you can forgive him for sounding atrocious on a cover of Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker during the band's first live show in 1987.

There's plenty of unreleased material here, the best being the 1989/1990 demos of tracks like Pay To Play, Aneurysm and Heart-Shaped Box, and some of Cobain's solo acoustic tracks from 1988 and'89. His version of Where Did You Sleep Last Night has a slack, deadpan strum that holds up his beautifully brittle voice. Then the demo of Pay To Play thunders up on you, while Aneurysm is powerful, big and brutal, and Cobain is in fine voice. If these are demos, it's easy to see why Nirvana were so big. These early, unfinished tracks are where Nirvana reek of Nirvana. The polish came later, but there's little here _ besides, most of us have the polished versions.

This collection is a must for fans. For those of you who deem Nirvana your Beatles, or your Rolling Stones, or your Clash, then treat yourself to some new Nirvana. It's a good trip. There hasn't been another band like them since.