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In all the material published this month about the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind (the record which changed rock/music/the world etc etc), there was one publication which has stood out for me.

, the go-to organ for young rock fans since 1981, has included the usual information about its genesis, importance and influence, but they've taken a brave step and included a cover-mount CD this week: a 're-imagining' of the classic album by 14 different artists, covering the tracks in order (plus a bonus of the inter-album single Sliver).

Nevermind Forever sleeve

It's never normally a good idea to cover classic tracks, let alone whole albums. The history of music is littered with bobbins cover versions, and the successful ones are few and far between. Usually, the element which made the originals into classics has been lost. The worst culprits manage to strip all soul and emotion from the song in favour of a highly-polished sheen (All Saints doing Under The Bridge, Madonna's American Pie or Hilary Duff doing My Generation, anyone?).

Given the dangers, you've got to admire the chutzpah of a project like Kerrang!'s. It's difficult to imagine an album as dearly-held by as many people as Nevermind. And it's difficult to over-emphasise the importance of the record; it even forced a major rethink on Kerrang! itself, back in the day. On its release in 1991, Guns N' Roses had produced the sprawling, coke-fuelled twin towers of stadium rock in Use Your Illusion volumes I and II: a gargantuan testament to the excess of 1980s American musical flatulence. Skid Row, Poison and Extreme were bona fide cover stars.

Nevermind shook these bands and their ilk to the core. Honesty, integrity and dirty pants were IN; spandex, hairspray and voting Republican was OUT. Kerrang! and other rock mags ditched their mates of old and suddenly it was all about Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Smashing Pumpkins. I don't think I ever saw Warrant referred to again.

Tracks from Nevermind have been covered before, it's true. Tori Amos recorded a version of Smells Like Spirit, as did Take That, Paul Anka, The Flying Pickets, Miley Cyrus and Nirvana's mates The Melvins. Lithium has been done by The Polyphonic Spree and Glasvegas have done Come As You Are. And Nirvana themselves were notorious cover artists in their own right. Their best-known is probably Love Buzz (originally by Shocking Blue), and there are the covers on Unplugged In New York including Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World, but they did a couple of dozen more over the years.

Kurt was inscrutable at the best of times, and I wouldn't hazard a guess at what he'd make of Kerrang!'s idea (he called Tori Amos' Teen Spirit "a great breakfast cereal version") but as an affectionate tribute, it's pretty damned good.

Kids In Glass Houses

There are two Welsh bands getting in on the act. Kids In Glass Houses tackle Drain You. Aled Phillips tells the magazine: "I was five when Nevermind came out. My sister taught me to hangbang to Teen Spirit. With Drain You, we thought it would be fun to recreate the middle eight, where Butch Vig recorded aerosols and a rubber duck. We bought a squeaky toy from Tesco and some Glade vanilla room spray. Smells like teen spirit..." In truth, it's a straightforward cover, with Phillips' vocals tracking Kurt's faithfully and the guitars blazing with well-marshalled distortion.

The Blackout

The Blackout's Stay Away is a more frenetic affair, as befitting the original. Again, it's true to the original but there's a sense of fun here: the Gavin/Sean vocal partnership gets to stretch its legs and it's pretty brutal. Gavin even goes as far as to put an American inflection on his lines. Rhys of the band told Kerrang!: "Nevermind was the album that got me into playing bass. Covering Stay Away is an honour. We're a hard rock band and this song is pretty heavy so I think we've captured the same feeling and intensity."

For me, though, the stand-out track here is Evile's Lounge Act. If I accept, as I do, that this collection was never going to replicate the unified, intense, wholeness of Nevermind, then here's a cover version that does something interesting with its material. They metal it up, with an amped-up riff and a lead guitar of admirable squeal and squall.

Check out Frank Turner's On A Plain, Francesqa's Lithium, Young Guns' Polly and Rise To Remain's Breed too. Nirvana: Nevermind Forever is as close as to a quality covers album as you're going to get. But what strikes me, on repeated listening, is that this album couldn't work without the fact that Nevermind itself possessed 13 songs of almost unparalleled quality, passion and melody. What other album could allow itself to be approached in this way?

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