Nirvana (British Band) - Musical Styles and Techniques

Musical Styles and Techniques

The group were in the school of baroque-flavoured, melodic pop-rock music typified by the Beach Boys of Pet Sounds and God Only Knows, the Zombies of Odessey and Oracle and Time Of The Season, the Procol Harum of A Whiter Shade of Pale, the Moody Blues of Days of Future Passed and Nights in White Satin and the Kinks of Waterloo Sunset and the Love of Forever Changes. The majority of the tracks on Nirvana's albums fell into that broad genre of contemporary popular music, not easily categorized but perhaps best described as the baroque or chamber strand of "progressive rock, soft rock or "orchestral pop" and " Chamber Pop".

The Nirvana song "Rainbow Chaser" is thought to be the first-ever British recording to feature the audio effect known as phasing or flanging throughout an entire track, as distinct from occasionally within a song such as the Small Faces in "Itchycoo Park". Phasing was, by 1967, heavily identified with the musical style known from 1967 onwards as psychedelia, and as "Rainbow Chaser" was the only Nirvana single to achieve commercial success, peaking at number 34 in UK Singles Chart during May 1968, they were invariably tagged as a "psychedelic" band. However, despite their name, promotional photographs on the cover of their first album wearing "flower power" style clothes that implied associations with "druggy" music and distorted acid rock-style guitars, the band actually had no associations with that style of music. "Rainbow Chaser" was one of the few Nirvana recordings that had any connection with "psychedelic" music, although "Orange and Blue" (1970) was acknowledged to have been written under the influence of LSD according to the liner notes of the eponymous album.