Back in the day I bought the Nirvana Singles box set because, well, it looked handsome sitting on a shelf. It was a nice little collectors item, yet not that convenient to actually listen to. Mostly I'd go to it for maybe a single b-side that I wanted to put on a mixtape or whatever. But for the most part, it was just something cool to look at. But I recently came into the good fortune of acquiring a bootleg release that puts the entire box on a single disk. And it turns out that listening to Singles in one sitting is a fascinating experience. One that I actually realized about a decade ago after ripping the contents of the box set into a single mp3 playlist. While there are plenty of Nirvana compilations out there to choose frome, they generally cater to one facet of the band. That is, the self-titled one collects their major A-sides; Sliver collects demos and outtakes; and so on. But Singles in this long-play format serves as a total Nirvana mixtape. One that allows huge hit singles to rub elbows with live tracks and b-sides. It's... actually pretty great.