After the release of their debut single "Love Buzz" on Sub Pop in November 1988, Nirvana rehearsed for two to three weeks in preparation for recording a full-length album.

In 2009, Sub Pop released a 20th anniversary edition of Bleach featuring a live recording of a 1990 Nirvana performance in Portland, Oregon as bonus material.

[19] Three of the album's songs – "Floyd the Barber", "Paper Cuts", and "Downer" – were recorded during a previous session at Reciprocal Studios in January 1988, featuring Melvins drummer Dale Crover.

[20] "Big Long Now" was omitted from the album because frontman Kurt Cobain felt "there was already enough slow heavy stuff on Bleach, and he 'didn't want that song to go out'", according to Endino.

Cobain also felt he had to fit the expectations of the grunge sound to build a fanbase, and hence suppressed his arty and pop songwriting traits while crafting the record.

[25] The songs were described as "deliberately bleak, claustrophobic, and lyrically sparse, with none of the manic derangement or sense of release of the live performance".

"[5] Describing the various songs on Bleach, Christopher Sandford wrote: "'Paper Cuts' includes a folk-influence melody and ponderous rhythm of an early Led Zeppelin number; 'Mr.

[27] In Sounds magazine, Keith Cameron said the song "was exhilarating and it was exciting because that was the nature of the music, but there was also an almost palpable sense of danger, that this whole thing could fall apart any second.

[32] The album cover was photographed by Cobain's then-girlfriend Tracy Marander during a concert at the Reko Muse art gallery in Olympia, Washington.

[34] The group began its first European tour, a double headliner with the band Tad, at the Riverside venue in Newcastle upon Tyne on October 23, 1989.

[41] For the 20th anniversary of the album, Sub Pop released on November 3, 2009 a deluxe reissue of Bleach featuring a March 2009 remastering from the original tapes by George Marino and a live recording of a 1990 show at Portland, Oregon's Pine Street Theatre.

[49] In NME, Edwin Pouncey gave Bleach an eight-out-of-ten rating and wrote, "This is the biggest, baddest sound that Sub Pop have so far managed to unearth.

So primitive that they manage to make label mates Mudhoney sound like Genesis, Nirvana turn up the volume and spit and claw their way to the top of the musical garbage heap.

"[53] Melody Maker reviewer Push deemed Nirvana "the only Sub Pop act to date whose songs consistently equal the standard set by their mates Mudhoney".

[55] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine opined that "Kurt Cobain illustrated signs of his considerable songcraft" on Bleach, "particularly on the minor-key ballad 'About a Girl' and the dense churn of 'Blew'", summarizing the album as "a debut from a band that shows potential but haven't yet achieved it.

[56] Robert Christgau wrote in The New Yorker, "Familiar now with Cobain's extraordinary gift, we can hear it loud and clear on the 1989 debut album, Bleach.

"[57] Christgau later commented that while he found Endino's production "way too dry for grunge, a way of music that benefits from extra sputum", he nonetheless considered Bleach "a major album".

[43] Anthony Carew from About.com said that Bleach defined "the entire decade of the '90s" and argued that while Nirvana's later albums "were more widely acclaimed, caused a bigger cultural impact, and were generally more accomplished", "the band's essence was at its most essential on their debut.

[65] Bleach was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in February 1995,[66] and had sold an estimated 1.9 million copies in the United States by September 2016.