Or maybe it's more Freudian than that. Maybe it's a reference to the vagina. Or maybe it refers to the way everybody judges everyone else on their looks and their dress and how the ugliest people can be the best-looking and the most beautiful people can be the most totally repugnant.

Or maybe it's about pain, as the rest of life is, and how, no matter how much pain and torment you put your body through, you always have that inner core of self inside you, that indefinable something which keeps you sane and keeps you together. It's a great phrase anyhow. Evocative. Manipulative. Optimistic.

It's also the title of the first album from the LA band Hole.

Courtney Love, singer with Hole, thinks she's earned the right to sing the blues. "A lot of the pain in Hole's music is mine, and that's cos this is the way I choose to express it," she says, her big actress eyes widening with unquestionable sincerity. "I'm very possessive of my pain and just express it for how it is. I used to express my pain in ways that were terrible for other people. Ways you wont want to know about. This is how I do it now.

"Hopefully, there are things about my pain which are authentic and original and haven't been expressed 8,000 times by white males and which people can find refreshing and relieving."

Courtney Love is all and far more than my opening paragraphs might have implied. She has a past. Boy, does she have a past. She's been a teenage slut, a stripper, a singer with Faith No More, an actress, a delinquent. She was in a band with Babes in Toyland's Kat Bjelland for a while, she nearly got the part of Tralala in 'Last Exit to Brooklyn'. She shared a house with Lydia Lunch, she's been in Alex Cox films, Julian Cope wrote "When I Dream" about her, her parents were famed hippies.

She also a great manipulator of people. She knows just what to say so they'll love her. My particular favourite is the one where she goes, "I've always been hated by the pen-pushers, the people who answer telephones. The people who love me are the people behind those telephones, people with power: Julian Cope, Elvis Costello, Alex Cox and...Everett True."

That one cracks me up every time. Now she's round my flat (not wearing my dressing gown) justifying her music. Not that she feels she has to. Hole's music is something different. Something apart.

"Having lived a rich, full, adventuresome, and decadent life, I have insights no-one else does," she says in that husky voice of hers, the volume changing theatrically from a loud fake English accent to a timid whisper. "Sure it's self-indulgent, sure, it can be vulgar. Most of the songs on this album are about females, because I get bored with songs about fucked up relationships with men. I've experienced many passionate friendships with females that are not necessarily sexual or even romantic but are definitely worth writing about."

Oh, and Courtney is a feminist, or whatever the damn hell the word is nowadays. Believe it. She's in control.

Hole are the purest articulation of pain that I've ever experienced. Whatever that means. Like, not only do their songs have a power and fury unequalled by anyone else around at the moment, but also bite, deep inside, way down deep. You can't help wondering how much Courtney pays the priest for the exorcism. For the album, before each take, co-producer Don Fleming would force half a bottle of whiskey down her throat ("Just for sport!"). It sure sounds like it. Not so much raw as blistering.

Check out the new single, 'Teenage Whore', which surpasses even the energy of Mudhoney's initial three minute spurt on songs about loneliness and sluttishness and pain and betrayal. Just another fun girl group, hey?

Of course, this isn't just down to Courtney. Hole are definitely NOT three dorks/bimbos plus Courtney. Hole also have Eric on guitar, Jill on bass and Caroline on drums, three distinct personalities - three distinctly fucked up personalities - and it's the interplay between them and Courtney that makes the band so potent.

But, unfortunately, E, J and C are quite softly-spoken and so, in interview, they tend to be completely overshadowed by their gregarious frontwoman. Their time will come, I'm sure of it.

Hole played two shows with Mudhoney the other night down the Astoria. Perhaps you caught them. You should have done. Purely as a rock experience, the first night, when everything fucked up and Courtney ended up smashing her only guitar - a Rickenbacker - in frustration, was completely insane, on a par with those early Mary Chain performances, Joy Division at the Moonlight, The Birthday Party anywhere. Hole were so antagonistic I'm surprised the audience didn't start running for safety the minute Courtney started screeching. Eric was pure fury on guitar, storming across the stage, threatening to bring down the whole rotten mess. The hatred and the anger were tangible.

The second night was more together, less on a knife-edge, but no less thrilling. Kids pogoed, stage-dived and tried to get a glimpse of Courtney's knickers as she thrust her hips forward into their faces, wielding her guitar like a demented incarnation of every retro male rocker's fears. Totally in control, totally hateful, evil, manipulative, powerful.

I ask Courtney if she means to be anntagonistic on stage.

"I don't wanna be as a person," she replies. "I think musically we're antagonistic anough without my foul personality coming through. We have a band and there's a provocation coming through that we've worked really hard at. The lyrics aren't purposefully provocative, I just don't want to bore myself."

When you get on stage are you on a masochistic kick?

"I think so. But also, I've learned how to be tough, so I can take you all on. So it's like, 'Here I am, I'm Jesus, but fuck you."

Would you say men tend to be intimidated by you?

"All the time, but I'm past caring about it. They're intimidated because I wasn't raised coquettishly and on't know how to be real demure and I don't know the tricks in that realm and I haven't taken the time to learn them because I feel like I have other stuff to do. I have relationships with people who are brave enough to deal with me, and I don't want to deal with people who aren't.

"I'm into the innocence of life and experiencing its beauty and whenever I feel suicidal I always find something - a person, a car - to draw me away. I like to shop, you know?"

Listen, Courtney is getting on her relationship kick.

"There are two types of people. Those who are masochists and sadists, and those who have no desire to inflict pain or get pain and that's the majority of people. You and me, Everett, we're completely in the minority. "That's what relationships are about: repulsion and attraction. These are the desirable relationships, but then we're a little more sensitive than a lot of stupid people who are happy to be in a nice relationship and are happy to live a nice life and not desire anything else. They don't desire truth and they don't desire hate. They don't desire evil and they don't desire decadance and they don't desire purity...

"That's fine, I envy those people. Those Russian farmers who live to 120 years on yoghurt with their simple lives. They don't have any stress. But it's no f-u-u-n," she says, drawing out the fun like a plea for help. "To be like we are and to me the funniest part of it all is when you show bone. That's because I'm so full of shit that when I'm honest enough to show some bone, it's like a Christ thing, almost. It feels pure when I do it, even if it's a deep emotional lie."

"There are two things you should know about me. Two little stories about my life I'll tell you."

OK. Carry on.

"Yeah, but you guys [pointing at Eric] have to leave. Leave! Just leave though, Go on, get out!"

Eric, who's been sitting inoffensively in the corner listening to this ranting, departs for the bedroom.

"First one is, I went up for a play once, it was for 'Snow White', a really big production down in Portland. I studied the part of Snow White forever and had it down, memorized. And they gave me, without auditioning me, the part of the Evil Witch. And that was when I was eight.

"The second one is when I came back from New Zealand and I had to go to this tough school. I didn't know anything about guys then, but I knew that you were supposed to desire them and they were better than horses or The Sweet or the Bay City Rollers.

"I'd been at that school for a week and I was popular because I had this accent and I was into this Bowie thing. There was this guy and his name was Gary Graff and he really nice to me and sweet and cool and funny and followed me around and everything. So we went out to the place where everyone smoked and he kissed me and gave me this hickey on my neck.

"So then these two incredibly popular girls asked me where I got my hickey and I was really proud, and I said, Oh, this guy Gary Graff, and they started laughing and cracking up. The deal was that Gary Graff was the biggest geek in school and everybody made fun of him. I didn't want that to happen to me, so I ignored him. I did that to him."

Her voice is pleading again.

"So the point is, for the rest of my life I've been haunted by this Gary Graff thing and, in my relationships, I just seek out Gary Graff. The Revenge of Gary! Fuck punk rock jock boys, I don't care!"

"All the Gary Graffs either grow up to be incredibly powerful fuckers or they're forever stuck, trying to fit in. People should just accept that Gary Graffness and go on from there. Those who don't are bigger losers than the normal people. Don't be bitter and mean cos you don't fit in, it's a gift! Look at you, you've got your individuality, you don't have the herd instinct, you can read Neitzsche and understand it. Only dumb people are happy."

For Gary Graffs everywhere: I give you Hole.