Let’s face it: our posthumous Kurt Cobain voyeurism is creepy. It’s also weirdly more sustainable than it should be. The Montage of Heck film’s release marks 21 years since his death, and this fact might explain why some who lived beside Kurt have called it “misguided fiction.”
The accompanying soundtrack Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is about what you’d expect: a Reagen-era twenty-something stoner making goofy, lo-fi bedroom guitar stuff and super weird skits to entertain himself, despite the starker stuff getting most of our collective attention. He messes with the pitch and speed of his voice, tries both dry acoustic as well as wall-of-noise electric guitars, etc. It’s alternately charming and off-putting. Here are some of the more peculiar standouts.
‘Montage of Kurt‘
A “montage” of short joke skits, all spliced together on tape. There are weird voices making silly jokes ready for Saturday morning cartoons, general references to stonerdom, and also some satirical jabs at folk-star worshipping acoustic guitarists. There’s no deeply darkened places scoured with a downtuned guitar, just the off-the-wall musings of a kid with a tape recorder and plenty of free time, with even more to come on “Montage of Kurt II:” [LISTEN]
‘Aberdeen‘
This one isn’t even a song idea or a weirdo, likely-improvised skit like the rest. Instead, it’s Kurt’s diatribe about growing up passed between broken homes inside a town where “macho male sexual stories [are] a highlight of all conversation,” of which contributed to his outsider status feelings, as heard at length in the movie. He details his possibly fictional sex with a mentally handicapped girl story, a train-track suicide attempt, some rebellious acts he indulged in, and of course: [LISTEN]
‘Underground Celebritism‘
While it clocks in at under 30 seconds, and Cobain obviously improvised the second line, fumbling to find something to put before “gist,” this one sticks out for its sarcasm. It’s only four lines total, but exposes hypocrisies in the “underground” music community — namely, the starfuckery displayed by its more infamous players. Maybe this one never got finished since his wife epitomized the subject: [LISTEN]
‘Sea Monkeys‘
Kurt messes around with more goofy images—this time its “sea monkeys” and “Paula Abdul,” who pops up several times. Later he follows the back-story of a young girl who loved her vinyl. In between, though, there’s a very quick sentence that’ll make anyone squirm, but only if they catch it: [LISTEN]
‘Rhesus Monkey‘
It’s delivered at first through a capella rapping, or maybe rhythmic spoken-word poetry. Cobain can’t quite keep up the pace at first, so he slows down only to finish again at full tilt. He goes for random word-association (some of which is used in later, full-fledged Nirvana tracks), violent fiction, gross-out imagery, and, eventually, self-loathing philosophizing: [LISTEN]
