Four years of Love as inescapable media presence, gossip monger and master of reinvention have led to this: an album that will give us vital insights into the person behind the persona, the character behind the caricature.
Yawn.
If you're still interested in what Courtney Love has to say, if you feel like trying to keep up, if you haven't overdosed on her mouth, then, sure, feel free to dissect the lyrics here.
The problem is that Love has made such a show of herself - building and destroying her own images - that it's hard to tell what's genuine anymore. Oh, you can try, and devotees will have a grand time deciphering word-playful lines such as those on "Reasons to Be Beautiful" (whose very title supports to explain Love's transformation from tempestuous trash queen to composed beauty princess).
"Love hates ou," she sings. "I left my life in ruins for you." Is it a message to her late husband, Kurt Cobain? Is she snarling at the facelifted Hollywood that has embraced her? Is it an indictment of her own former bent for self destruction?
The bigger and more perplexing questoin: Is she speaking as the Courtney Love she thinks we all know? Or is she revealing some part of her core we've never seen?
Figuring that out is a fruitless quest, because you'll never get a straight answer from Love anyway. So just pay attention to the sounds on "Celebrity Skin" - it's one durned good power pop record, made up of economical guitar lines, sticky melodies and a rhythm section that pulses more than it pushes. On infectious tracks like "Awful," with its double-tracked lead vocal and under-the-mix hand claps, Hole shimmers like some postmodern hybrid of Magnapop and the Runaways, virtually genuflecting to alterna-pop pioneers Julianna Hatfield and Matthew Sweet.
One thing it's not is "Live Through This," the scathing, trashy 1994 album that cemented Love's place as more than a rock martyr's widow. Much like her sense of style, Love's vocals have turned from melodic scream to syrupy croon. No matter their timbre, though, proper investigation of this music means chewing on more than the voice.
It's guitarist Eric Erlandson who provides the sonic stardust, creating a backdrop that alternately sparks ("Heaven Tonight"), gangles ("Malibu") and flat out rocks ("Celebrity Skin"). Producer Michael Beinhorn polishes it all for heavy radio play, pushing the sound into the red only occasionally, as on the loud, lumbering "Use Once and Destroy."
In 12 tracks, those sounds make a bigger declaration than Love could make in 100 interviews: Escape from pain - true catharsis - is a triumph worth celebrating. What better way to do that than by immersing in a crunchy riff and sweet melody?
And that's enough said.
- Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press