credit in the straight world?

Has has anyone played the redemption card more than Courtney Love? Frankly, there's no reason to think that her latest resurgence is anything more than a brief return to normalcy before she gets bored with being good and decides to get dirty again. Do I feel a little burned by the stalled multiple releases of Nobody's Daughter? The fact that it's exploiting the history and legacy of Hole (a band! a band!) in order to compensate for the lackluster solo track record of its central subject? Well, yeah. I still wish great things for Courtney, but to be honest, I wanted her burning down palm trees with Eric and Melissa or self-releasing the Nobody's Daughter demos to quiet critical acclaim or, I don't know, releasing a Fleetwood Mac covers album. The studio versions of Nobody's Daughter have gone through so many cycles and writers and producers that some sound as tired and used as Samantha, the title character on a track that Courtney once likened to "Roxanne" and "Rhiannon."

Of course it's unfair to judge a record based on what you wanted it to be instead of on what it is. There's no reason to expect Live Through This 2.0 from Love, or even to assume that such a record, if it could be made, would be relevant. The problem is that Nobody's Daughter doesn't succeed even on its own terms. It simply can't sustain itself long enough to become the phoenix record it wants to be (and that Celebrity Skin was). Do we need Courtney to prostrate herself or seek redemption? If that's what this was really about, you'd think she would have spent a little more time mending fences with the band itself instead of starting from scratch with a bunch of cock-rockers. Given Hole's turbulent history, it would be easy to assume that such reconciliation would be impossible, but interviews with Eric and Melissa have shown that they were open to making a new record but were never approached.

This makes listening to Nobody's Daughter as a confessional comeback album difficult because it reeks of cynicism. And it's a dangerous narrative because it sets Love up for another hard fall, doesn't it? Even as she claims she'll never go hungry again, you have to wonder what it is that will keep her appetite sated. New York? Music? Touring? I'm not sure we need her to say words like "never again" and to feed us images of fleeing the decadence of the West Coast. That was fun the first time around but look where it got us: crappy collaborations with Linda Perry, a table dance on Letterman's desk, and custody issues that are none of my business but are frankly hard to ignore given the record's title. At this point, it would be nice to have Love's songs speak the moment a little more--not the past or the future, but right now.

The good:

1. The album cover is well-chosen.

2. I like the title track and the Dylan-esque strums and couplets of "I Will Never Go Hungry Again," a song that resists becoming trite by willing to be funny and true ("my wig's on crooked and I got no shoes").

3. I've heard arguments for and against lead single "Skinny Little Bitch." Say what you will about the banal lyrics and grunge retread, but it's one of the only songs on the album that puts the instrumentation front and center where it's always been on Hole records. I also think the first couple minutes get vocals just right. I don't need Courtney to be Marianne Faithful. I have Marianne Faithful for that. Her voice used to be a powerhouse, and I understand that times change. Point is, change with them. If you can't wail like the old days then write melodies that you can handle. And you know what might have helped with that? Some nice cooing from the game Melissa Auf Der Maur instead of that shitty Pro-Tools layering they used throughout the album.

4. If it's a battle between Billy and Courtney (and it is) then Courtney wins every time.

The bad:

1. Oh god, "Pacific Coast Highway" is just awful. Courtney knows Hole's legacy, and I think she also knows that "Malibu" and "Boys on the Radio" were two of the best pop songs of the 1990s full stop. But this shit takes those song's signifiers--California, the ocean, death--and just phones. it. in. The worst part? It's the exact same song as the awful "Sunset Strip" from her solo album. Linda Perry needs to stop (everything) because this is madness.

2. They needed an executive producer and a better mixer. I've said it before, but a lot of these songs sound cheap and overworked. Compile the demos and release them as a digital EP.

3. Don't call it Hole. It's not. And that's okay. XOLondon posted this interview a few weeks ago with Eric Erlandson who gosh darn it just seems like a great and wise guy. He verbalizes a lot of my feelings about C. Love and this project.