Nirvana's In Utero turns 33, and its Steve Albini mixes are still an argument

Nirvana released In Utero on 21 September 1993, which makes it 33 years old today. It was the third studio album the band finished and the last, and it was made by three people who had just watched Nevermind turn them into the centre of popular culture and wanted something rougher, more physical and at times deliberately uncomfortable to come out the other side.

The choice of Steve Albini was the whole plan in one decision. Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl were admirers of Surfer Rosa by the Pixies and Pod by the Breeders, records on which Albini had captured something organic and circumstantial rather than sculpted. Before he agreed to the job he sent the band a written proposal setting out how he understood recording, a document that read less like a contract than a statement of principle: record the thing as it comes out, intervene as little as possible, and make an album that represents how the musicians themselves hear their work.

The most striking clause was about money. Albini refused to take royalties on sales, on the view that the percentage belonged to the musicians, and worked for a flat fee of $100,000 instead. Given what the album went on to sell, that decision cost him a sum most engineers would have taken without a second thought.

The sessions were fast even by his standards. The band went to Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota in February 1993, a long way from the industry's big rooms, and stayed isolated there for the duration; Albini has recalled that the work was finished in roughly twelve days. His pursuit of natural acoustics pushed the band into odd corners of the building, and for some of the quicker songs, Very Ape and Tourette's among them, Grohl cut drum parts in a kitchen to use the reverb of the room.

The album nearly carried a much darker name. Cobain wanted to call it I Hate Myself and I Want to Die, after one of the songs; the phrase had turned up in his journals and was the answer he often gave when somebody asked how he was. He later explained that he meant it as a joke aimed at the tormented-musician image that had been built around him, but Novoselic was afraid it would be read straight and talked him out of it. In Utero came instead from a poem by Courtney Love.

The sleeve came out of the same fixation with bodies. The winged mannequin on the front began as a transparent anatomical teaching model, an object Cobain had been drawn to for years, and he built the back cover collage himself at home out of fetus models, anatomical parts, flowers and other objects, photographed by Charles Peterson. By the accounts of that session he spent hours arranging the pieces while one of the album's final mixes played.

Not everything on the finished record is Albini's mix, and that remains the sorest point. Word went around after the sessions that the label found the album too abrasive; later testimony complicated the story by noting that the band had its own doubts about some of the mixes. Either way, Scott Litt, known for his work with R.E.M., remixed Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies before the album shipped, and Albini's versions of both were left off and only restored officially on later anniversary editions. Albini felt the episode damaged his standing in the mainstream industry, and it sits exactly on the contradiction the record was built around: a band trying to get away from the sound of Nevermind without giving up the melodies that had made it enormous.

Thirty-three years on, the songs are the argument's best witnesses. Heart-Shaped Box, All Apologies, Dumb and Serve the Servants all demonstrated that a less accommodating sound was compatible with the tunes that had made Nirvana a global concern, and the band's catalogue is still live enough to generate its own news: this summer Phoebe Bridgers recorded Lithium for the BBC Live Lounge, and in August Live Nation's merchandise arm sued sellers over counterfeit Nirvana goods. Nothing in the way of a reissue or anniversary edition has been announced to mark the date, which leaves the anniversary to the rock audience rather than to a campaign.