D+
When the history of music in the 1990s is written, 1998's chapter might very well be termed "The Year of the Alternachick Comeback" (if I could be so crass). We've already seen the first new record in four years from Liz Phair (reviewed in this issue), as well as a new album from Alanis Morissette (whose name shall never grace these pages again until the corporate buyout). Meanwhile, along comes Courtney Love and her star vehicle known as Hole with their first new record since 1994's Live Through This, an album that, for my money, remains one of the better big-label releases of the decade (and not just because of its sad timing).
Sure, the names are pretty much the same - Love, Eric Erlandson, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Patty Schemel (who's since left the band) - but upon closer inspection, we find a Courtney that's not a product of her roots, but rather a bastardized, Hollywooden version of her old self that we might as well christen as Malibu Courtney, complete with shiny new guitar bought with her check from the Larry Flynt movie. Yeah, she cleans up real nice, but can her band still rock?
Depends on your point of view, I guess. The opening track and leadoff single, "Celebrity Skin", is a finely crafted tune that finds the balance between rock and pop-rock that so many bands want to achieve these days. And is there any other line in music that will stick with you more than "When I wake up in my makeup"?
The second track, "Awful", is more of the same - a well-written, sugar-coated pop number with a jagged chorus. But, as its title perhaps foreshadows, it's all downhill from there.
Forget all you've heard about the problems Love had with Billy Corgan, who had a hand in five of the songs on the record. The only place you hear his direct influence is on a song he had no involvement in, a track called "Northern Star", which seems more of an outtake from the "Disarm" sessions than it does an Erlandson-penned piece.
A big quibble I have with Celebrity Skin (though not the biggest one; more on that in a second) is that Love spouts the same old lyrical themes that were in vogue in the early 1990s, but now sound merely silly. For instance, Love's obsession with beauty is a main theme of the album - there are at least five instances of the use of the word "beautiful", and that's not even counting the tired "Reasons To Be Beautiful". Also included are references to "apathy," two mentions of "tasting like candy," multiple occult references, multiple flower references, multiple ... God, when will it stop? Hasn't this been done before, and wasn't it done better back then?
The biggest problem I have with this record is Michael Beinhorn's production. Perhaps Courtney wanted her band to come off sounding like a dime-a-dozen hair-metal band from 1988 - Beinhorn's credits, after all, include Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzmosis album. But the mental image of this record that I can't shake is a portrait of a big-shot ponytailed sunglasses-wearing studio engineer doing a line of coke, listening to the band lay down the tracks for the song "Malibu" and calling out to Courtney, "Perfect, babe! Perfect!" Sleazy.
Maybe with her screen success, the fire that burned within Love a few years ago has subsided. The bile and piss-and-vinegar attitude in her music is no more; what's left can be regarded as no stronger than tepid. It's a shame to see a record that was so eagerly anticipated turn out to have a bad complexion.
--Brandon Grimes