Beyond inducing a sense of loss for Cobain himself, Unplugged elicits a feeling of musical loss, too: The delicacy and intimacy of these acoustic rearrangements hint at where Nirvana (or at least Cobain, who was said to be frustrated with the limitations of the band) could have gone. On record, the combined effect is ! hypnotic: The slowed-down ”About a Girl,” a yearning garage-band rocker from Bleach, sounds more urgent than the original, and the rendition of Leadbelly’s ”Where Did You Sleep Last Night” is terrifying, especially when Cobain’s voice leaps from a dazed murmur to a phlegmy, mesmerizing screech in the last verse. Cobain’s voice wheezed out as if through a tightly clamped throat, and the arrangements, starting with his own scruffy guitar plunking, were as rough-hewn as country blues. (That, and the resurrection of Eric Clapton and of the live album, will be the show’s lasting contributions.) Yet, if anything, the music Nirvana played that night was nearly as coiled up as their electric numbers. At its best, the overdone Unplugged format has loosened up some of rock’s most choreographed performers. Many of the artists who appeared on the show in the 1990s released their Unplugged session as an album, and some of these albums were commercial and critical.
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