TV REVIEWS : Nirvana on ‘MTV Unplugged’

No, no acoustic guitars get smashed in Nirvana’s turn at an “MTV Unplugged” (at 9 tonight); no drum kits are upended. All that gets overturned is any skepticism that the band’s hooky, impressionistic blasts might not survive the telling translation from shelling down to shhh .

Kurt Cobain’s gifted songwriting has, of course, almost always had a core pop sensibility that renders its permutation here predictably effective. “Come as You Are,” not surprisingly, turns out to be as brooding a folk song as it was a punk ballad, the power of its riffing (in tandem with new guitarist Pat Smear) undiminished as the most critically acclaimed band in America turns it down from 11 to about a 5.

More often the group does pick its already more subdued material for the task--going for dirges like “Something in the Way,” or the latest album’s two cello-backed ballads, “Dumb” and “All Apologies” (with Lori Goldston stepping in as cellist on those and most other numbers here), over the outright broadsides in the catalogue.

The emphasis on slower material, while likely to disappoint some, keeps the idea of a Nirvana acoustic set from becoming too stunt-like--and allows for unusual cover choices, such as David Bowie’s “Man Who Sold the World” and a couple of odd religious-themed folk tunes.

The risk factor here isn’t so much in the transmutation of the mosh-pit fodder as in the idea of Cobain, a classic exhibitionist introvert, not hiding within the wall of noise that proves such an effective mask for his shyness. Seated and closed-eyed, he’s not exactly a galvanizing on-camera presence, but there’s a nice tension in his holding back the reins on his melody-whelping rasp until he lets loose in the last song’s final chorus.

Nirvana’s isn’t the best “Unplugged” ever, but it offers the pleasures of the best episodes in which performers simply cast a kind of hush over their material, revealingly, instead of looking for an excuse for a live album.