Sliver

We’ve been basking in the warm glow of Nirvana nostalgia since the mid-'90s, but the recent tidal wave of unearthed tracks threatens to expose a truth we weren’t ready for: Their shit stinks as bad as anyone else’s. Sliver is a single-disc compendium of rarities for those too cheap (or too sensible) to shell out for last year’s box set. (It also adds three previously unreleased tracks.) Sloppy early material, sloppier live cuts, and half-formed demos of songs that didn’t become interesting until later reveal little other than the band’s passion and their oft-forgotten sense of humor. It’s interesting as anthropology, but little else.