Observer: November 14, 2004. Nirvana: With the Lights Out (Geffen) The trouble with retrospection - especially the kind of hagiographical retrospection that comes with a box set - is that it lends everything added poignancy. Even feedback, or the hum and snap of an amp being turned off. The last sound on the long-heralded and much fought-over Nirvana 3-CD box set - Kurt Cobain's widow Courtney Love held out on the surviving members of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, for many years - is of Cobain switching off at the end of a demo version of 'All Apologies'. His guitar is barely in tune. His voice is the familiar, almost defeated rasp that characterised Nirvana's most thoughtful tracks. This version is undated, but the two demos of new songs that precede it - 'You Know You're Right' and the strange novelty 'Do Re Mi' - are from 1994. Of course, Cobain didn't see much of 1994. And so the final triptych of intimate demos on disc three comes superimposed with our own mournful tint, as well as Cobain's. It's just him, his guitar, and you. And then he switches off. The quavery coda contrasts with the bulk of With the Lights Out, a pretty well comprehensive and roughly chronological round-up of Nirvana alternate versions, live tracks, radio sessions, covers, dress rehearsals and unissued songs. The majority have never been released before, providing a satisfying return for £40; the DVD boasts even more rarities. The whole package unapologetically caters to the librarian/nerd contingent of the Nirvana fanbase, and those with a healthy appetite for the distortion-heavy metallic punk that became known as grunge in the early Nineties (an appetite especially vital to the appreciation of CD1, the early years). Most everything here is unadorned, ragged, scorched. Nirvana, the multi-platinum rock phenomenon, don't intrude too often on Nirvana, the skinny guys with guitars and - literally, in the suffering Cobain's case - a bellyful of bitter fire. Nirvana's lyrics, too, warp under the lens of this backwards scrutiny. On 'The Other Improv' - dating from 1993 - an addled-sounding Cobain notes: 'If we didn't have chemicals / You wouldn't be writing my death certificate.' Then there's Cobain's spoken part to the rather fine 'Mrs Butterworth' (1988), in which he details nailing driftwood to plywood and selling it as art for 'lots of money'. If only he knew what was to come. What else do we learn that we did not know before? That these punks really liked Led Zeppelin, for starters. The collection opens with an endearing live stumble through 'Heartbreaker' from their first gig in 1987, 'Moby Dick' gets an airing a year later. But even in 1992, on a sublime 10-minute version of 'Scentless Apprentice' that's the best full-band track here, Nirvana sound rather like Led Zeppelin played by Big Black, the malevolent former band of their then-producer, Steve Albini. Other discoveries include a trio of excellent and moving Leadbelly covers to accompany 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night'; a hilariously uncomfortable rendition of the Velvet Underground's 'Here She Comes Now'; and an early songwriting credit for drummer Dave Grohl ('Marigold'). Grohl, of course, went on to front his own band, the extremely successful Foo Fighters. There's the infamous 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die', too, a title the disenchanted Cobain wanted to lend to the record that became In Utero. But more enduring than that sour polemic is 'Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip', the dissonant beauty that closed In Utero. Ironically, even though it forms part of the existing Nirvana canon, it makes sense of everything else here. The band are jamming a little aimlessly when Cobain cries: 'One more solo?' The trio instantly hit their stride, bringing the deafening, full-blooded sound of Nirvana, the most important rock band of their generation, into the studio. Cobain screams 'Yeah!' like a kid on a rollercoaster. And then, as quickly as it coalesces, it all falls apart.