Hole - Courtney Love - A Riot Girl Asking to Be Burned

The riot grrrl scene of the early Nineties was first and foremost a socio-political movement, and only secondarily a musical one. Much like the hippie movement 25 years earlier - both of them, incidentally, born in San Francisco. Riot music was to grunge what hippie music had been to psychedelic acid-rock. Riot music, then, like hippie music, is community-centre music (though the reverse isn't true: grunge and psychedelic acid-rock aren't only community-centre music). The point is that while the hippies' social concerns centred on utopian, hopeful visions of the future (with drugs, flower power, free love and pacifism as the backdrop), the riot grrrls' concerns were just as symptomatically social, but born of a society that, by then unmistakably defined by greyness, alienation and nihilism, could only sterilize any glimmer of utopian revivalism from the outset.

For more on other aspects of the riot grrrl movement, I'll refer you to my pieces on grunge and on Babes in Toyland. As for Hole, suffice it to say they were among the founders of the movement.

Courtney Love is a terrible songwriter and an even worse guitarist. Courtney Love doesn't make art, doesn't make rock insofar as rock can be called art. What she does is a kind of outburst, moving from the personal and the alienation of the individual to the propagandistic and the alienation of, if not an entire generation, at least a particular historical-geographical context. This also feeds into the discourse on gender (and on the man/woman relationship), constantly swinging between the sociological (historical) plane and the anthropological (natural) one. Bands like Hole matter more on a historical-social level than on a musical one. Sticking to that point, they can be considered among the first female interpreters of grunge. And although wholly inferior to Babes In Toyland, they played a part, acting as a connecting link between the first female hard-rockers of the post-new wave era (Frightwig and L7) and the glut of pointless riot grrrl bands of the Nineties.

No Hole song will go down in history. The 1991 ones because they aren't songs but uncontrollable fits of retching. The 1994 ones because they fall somewhere between song and vomit without being effective as either. The 1998 ones because they are stupid, insignificant songs. If it's true that history is full of stupid, insignificant songs (indeed, perhaps most of them are), it's also true, on one hand, that I was referring not to the history of sales but to artistic importance, and on the other that no Hole song will go down even in the history of sales, nor even among mere ditties, because they can't boast so much as a hook capable of lodging in your head or being whistled.

Hole are at their best when they're retching. And that's where their meaning lies: not in making music, but in expressing the brutal, anguished nihilism of a slice of the world full of very young girls with no money, no future, no real feelings, no culture, no will to live. That slice of the world, geographically and historically, would be represented by the American West Coast, and specifically the San Francisco/Seattle area in the early Nineties; and, ideally, by all the pockets of youthful - and above all female - depression scattered around the world in the post-ideological or post-industrial era, whatever you want to call it.

Hole retch on Pretty On The Inside. And this is their testament, valid for cultural studies (if not musical ones) to come. The album is poorly written and even more poorly played. Honestly, no one here seems capable of handling what's supposed to be their instrument. Even the production (by none other than Kim Gordon) leaves something to be desired. So does the mixing. And yet all of this works in favor of the effectiveness and peculiarity of a record that rests entirely (as had already happened with Frightwig, and partly with Babes In Toyland) on Love's voice. She screams, screams to the point of exhaustion and without a break. At times terrifying - though never (her ribcage simply won't allow it!) as powerful as Kat Bjelland. It verges on death metal, the kind achieved by the great Wendy Williams of Plasmatics in the early Eighties: she was the teacher of them all.

1991 is one of the richest years in the history of rock. Setting aside Type O Negative, Dogbowl, Unsane, Honeymoon Killers, Slowdive, Barkmarket, Codeine, Eden, Paradise Lost, Melvins, Mudhoney, Cypress Hill, Massive Attack, Primal Scream, Savatage and many others, it's the year of Drive Like Jehu ("Drive Like Jehu"), Fugazi ("Steady Diet Of Nothing"), Jesus Lizard ("Goat"), My Bloody Valentine (" Loveless "), Slint (" Spiderland "), Pearl Jam ("Ten"), Metallica ("Metallica"), Mercury Rev ("Yerself Is Steam"), Pegboy ("Strong Reaction") - and as for more mainstream music, remember that '91 is the year of hits like "One" (U2), "Losing My Religion" (REM), "Under The Bridge" (Red Hot Chili Peppers), "Don't Cry" and "November Rain" (Guns n' Roses), "The Show Must Go On" (Queen), "Nothing Else Matters" (Metallica), "All This Time" (Sting), "More Than Words" (Extreme), "Wind Of Change" (Scorpions). In any case, 1991 is above all the year of " Nevermind " by Nirvana. And it's the year of Hole's LP debut.

Pretty On The Inside is a truly difficult, extreme record. Exasperation, boredom, disgust, brutalized and leaden disharmony and dissonance are its coordinates.

The blonde, bewitching Courtney Love (b. 1964, San Francisco), after a disjointed adolescence - though one already inclined toward exhibitionism (she worked as a stripper in Alaska) - and generally devoted to the dream of becoming a star (she had a cameo in the films "Sid And Nancy" and "Straight To Hell"), between 1986 and 1987 followed Kat Bjelland - first in San Francisco, then in Minneapolis - during the proto-Babes in Toyland period (very young, around '85, in San Francisco she had also worked with those who would later become Faith No More). This gave a decisive turn to her life, which she focused on the punk-rock she had always worshipped (perhaps more for the lifestyle than for the music). After splitting from Kat Bjelland in Los Angeles in 1989 - in one of the most unpleasant breakups in rock history, perhaps due to the fact that both were singers, guitarists and born leaders - she founded Hole: Eric Erlandson (guitar), Jill Emery (bass), Caroline Rue (drums). She was 25. At 27 she managed to release Pretty On The Inside. That same period also saw her move in with the then twenty-four-year-old Kurt Cobain (the two would marry in '92).

Overall, Hole can be described as the pop version of Babes in Toyland: from Love's snarls, to the drums' tribalism, to the guitars' systematic ignorance of out-of-tune riffs, to the bass's claustrophobia. Over a musical structure that is essentially slow (doom) and frail (misshapen), rises a bestial voice that is the keystone, the dictator, the whole point of it all. Pretty On The Inside is also their best album precisely because it's the one closest to the Babes In Toyland model. Love's character on this record, however, stands apart from Kat Bjelland's, regardless of the similarity in form. As desperate and tragic as Babes In Toyland are, Hole are apathetic, deadened. If the former scream because they're in pain, the latter scream because they're trapped in utter emptiness. Pretty On The Inside is one of the most radical nihilistic manifestos in rock - all the more radical for being made by musicians and songwriters with so little actual substance. There are sprawling, expansive tracks, total wildernesses of perdition and bog: "Good Sister/Bad Sister" [- 5:47] is built on a lift from Babes in Toyland (especially the characteristic sobbing doom, though softened by a somewhat sped-up gait); "Mrs. Jones" [- 5:25] raves, in a danceable groove, as much as it can - which isn't much, given the inelegance of the title; "Babydoll" [- 4:59] - named after one of Love/Bjelland's old bands - moves between asthmatic-sexual whispers and bursts of scratching screams; "Pretty On The Inside/Clouds" [- 5:25], the best of the lot, mixes rap-metal excess with trailing Sonic Youth guitars; "Loaded" [- 4:19], while indebted to Sonic Youth's guitars, rhythmically winks at Blondie's punk-dance. There are three mid-length tracks of immediate impact: "Teenage Whore" [- 2:57], with the classic (rhythmic) back-and-forth between dirge-like disbelief and the most horrifying violence; "Garbage Man" [- 3:19] - the masterpiece - where, amid the stumbling, dazed chaos and jagged peaks, a hint of melody pokes through (though thoroughly disfigured all the same); "Berry" [- 2:46] even manages to recall the Stooges (another band built not so much on musical violence as vocal violence), so fierce, unbridled and collapsed in on itself is it. Finally, there are experimental detours: "Sassy" [- 1:43] is pure cacophony, "Starbelly" [- 1:46] finally features a squared-off rhythm section, incorporates various overdubs (in the form of a radio switching stations), and has guitars just like our own Marlene Kuntz (that is, like a simplified Sonic Youth).

Besides Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, the album was produced by her friend Don Fleming (ex-Velvet Monkeys, BALL, Half Japanese, and one of the institutions of indie rock, having also worked with Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, former Velvet Underground member Moe Tucker, etc.).

In 1994, a week after Cobain's suicide, Live Through This came out. Hole are a different band now. Not just because Kristen Pfaff is on bass and Patty Schemel on drums. Before, Hole's music was cacophony. Now it's grunge-pop. Courtney Love is 30, a mother, still a drug addict, and wants to try her hand at songwriting (following in her husband's footsteps: as shown by the change in her voice, which, while still screaming, is now controlled, no longer the untamed sublime of before). Above all, though, she keeps her dearest ghost locked in the closet: the star system. Perhaps that's the only front on which she'll succeed (the album reached No. 52 on Billboard). To be clear: Live Through This isn't among the worst records of '94. It's just that no song manages to hold together from start to finish; no track avoids growing tedious or losing your interest at some point. And that's true even of the best ones. The rest are good for nothing but a yawn. The best tracks, as on Pretty On The Inside, are carried solely by Love's heart. The flashes, the engaging moments, are, as ever, not down to any real artistry, but simply to her ability to genuinely convey her own states of mind. On the debut, those states of mind were those of a rock or a sewer. Now, those of an average punk-rocker. Before there was the apocalypse, now a maintenance-level country tune. Before, total reification; now, a life that's perhaps presumptuous, occasionally moving, more often just silly. The producers are Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, the most famous sound engineering duo in the indie world. "Violet", "Plump", "Jennifer's Body", "I Think That I Would Die" are the tracks (4 out of 12) worth any serious consideration.

Celebrity Skin (1998) completes the band's crossover into mass-market music, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard charts. "Celebrity Skin" (melodic grunge, years after grunge had already ended) and "Malibu" (a dreadful garage-rock ballad) were the singles. On the latter, the pen of Billy Corgan, leader of Smashing Pumpkins, proves remarkably bland - the same blandness and the same pen that afflict most of the album's songs. Live Through This is better than Celebrity Skin because in '94 Love was sleeping with Cobain and stealing the odd sheet of music from him between sessions; in '98, with Corgan, it was simply a matter of worse sheet music.

After Hole broke up (2002), having drained every last drop of life from themselves, Love - perhaps waiting for a big film or TV gig (just as Madonna has been doing for years and years) - released American Sweetheart in 2004, managing to make listeners actually miss not having turned to Madonna's music instead. Meanwhile, she continues to fill the headlines with her legal misadventures, between drug trials and arrests for assault and various other outbursts.

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