COURTNEY LOVE DECIDES TO SULLY HOLE’S ALREADY DAMAGED REPUTATION
Paleozoic UK-based periodical NME reported today that Courtney Love will release her long-delayed second solo record as a Hole album. Apparently, none of the band’s other members will actually perform on the record, save for a possible appearance on backing vocals by Hole’s last bassist Melissa auf der Maur. With a brazen move that would make Burton and Dino blush, the Gratest Bloggre On Earht has effectively delivered a huge fuck you to co-founder Eric Erlandson by co-opting the name in an attempt to save her perpetually disintegrating career.
From the dinosaur’s mouth:
Now, there will be plenty of people who throw rocks at Courtney for bringing back a modified version of Hole for the same reasons that they threw rocks at Corgan for bringing back Smashing Pumpkins. I would raise them that Courtney and Billy are the essences of Hole and the Pumpkins for the same reasons that Liam and Noel are the essence of Oasis. Does anybody question the authenticity of an Oasis without Tony McCarroll, Bonehead and the other one? Thought not.
Point taken, olde fashioned magazine journalist, but that’s giving waaaaaaaay too much credit to Love given that, in my opinion, all of the good songs on Hole’s Celebrity Skin, the group’s most hailed third album, were written with Corgan, as the liner notes indicate. I wont comment on Live Through This other than to say it was a downright remarkable departure from its noise rock predecessor Pretty On The Inside. That this will be the first Hole album that Erlandson doesn’t play on should serve as a red flag to anyone who actually listened to any of these records and liked them.
Some weeks back, an album’s worth of music purporting to be Nobody’s Daughter leaked onto the Intarwebs. From what I heard, these seemed more like demos punctuated by Love’s characteristically raspy vocals. Perhaps that is what NME intends to provide a track-by-track review of. If that’s the case, Hole fans can expect to be pretty disappointed. These tracks were about a rocking as your dead grandparents. However, let’s assume that those songs are not the same as the ones Love and her current collaborators have chosen for Nobody’s Daughter.
Look, this whole thing stinks of record company/management intervention, no doubt influenced by the underwhelming commercial response to Love’s also-delayed solo debut America’s Sweetheart or perhaps financial desperation. Consider this: would a new “Hole” album sell more than a new Courtney Love solo album? Obviously. Guns N’ Roses’ last album may have been a flop, but it’s hard to argue that an Axl Rose solo LP wouldn’t have fared even worse.
It is unclear how much money has been invested in this record, but it’s reasonable to assume it doesn’t match the debt incurred by Chinese Democracy. I guess that’s something positive to end on…
-GS
[Gary Suarez loves you so much it just turns to hate. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don’t you follow him on Twitter?]
