The Bottom Line: Courtney Love and Co. have a great thing here. The guitars and drums are loud and fun. Love can't sing, but she sure makes a great album!
lambchops's Full Review: Live Through This by Hole
Hole began as innocently as most other punk/rock/grunge bands in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The difference with this band was that a) they were mostly women and b) the lead singer/guitarist was the soon-to-be infamous Courtney Love.
Love began her career in a number of bands, but it wasn’t until she founded her own that she found any notoriety. Love and her fellow bandmates recorded their debut Pretty On the Inside on Caroline Records. The record that was released to little fanfare in 1991. The band consisted of four members: Love, Eric Erlandson (guitar), Jill Emery (bass), and Caroline Rue (drums). Of course, much of Hole’s success was marked with tragedy. Just before the release of their second album (four days to be exact), Love’s husband Kurt Cobain of Nirvana fame, shot himself in the head thus ending his short yet amazing career and his life.
Following the tragedy, Hole released their already-recorded major label followup Live Through This in 1994. There continued to be problems as Emery’s replacement, Kristen Pfaff, suffered a heroin overdose. Despite these hardships, Live Through This got great reviews and fans of the genre at the album up. The album spawned three hits in the form of ”Doll Parts”, ”Miss World”, and ”Violet”. This album launched the career of Hole and for that matter the multi-talented (and newly cleaned up) Love.
As I said before, Live Through This was a critical and commercial success as a result of many factors, most notable it’s relenting anger and uncharacteristic female flavor in grunge. This second album is a more refined and more radio-ready version of the band’s debut. This isn’t to say that Hole sold out. No, no…Love is not feminine in the least. She growls and she yowls and she screams her way through the twelve tracks on the album. The album doesn’t contain my favorite Hole track, but then again my favorite track from the band is a remake of Fleetwood Mac’s super rock tune ”Gold Dust Woman”. Sit back and relax and find out just why Rolling Stone said ”Live Through This is the work of a woman who measured the depth of her abyss by taking the plunge – and is still struggling for daylight.”
Hole leads off this album with the extraordinary track ”Violet”. The song is very much rock flavored but features the downbeat rhythm, voices, and lyrics that characterize early and mid 1990’s grunge alternative music. It’s also got Hole’s typical punk flavor. The guitars are heavy and convoluted and Love’s voice isn’t singing. Oh no. She puts all of her power and energy into the song with such power and prowess that the band sounds like a group of seasoned veterans. This is definitely one of the most important tracks of the album.
”Miss World” sounds almost folky, as though Hole has gotten a heart. That’s the case until you listen to the lyrics. I’m Miss World…somebody kill me… This is of course very unlike pop music. It becomes apparent that this is a very angry song at intervals. The song picks up the folk reigns and screams angrily at all the injustices done to Love (as she is the leader of this band). It’s a great track. Sure, there’s some anger, but the drums and guitars are absolutely awesome. This is true rock and roll ala 1994.
A third hit from this album is the seemingly twisted ”Doll Parts”. This track is a bit softer than the other tracks I’ve spoken about. Love attempts to sing rather than scream. Love pours out her emotion about her husband, Cobain: I just love him so much it just turns to hate….some day, you will ache like I ache. To be quite honest, this song is about as touching as ones from the band can get. Throughout the track, Love get more and more angered repeating the line Some day, you will ache like I ache over and over again.
Love speaks about her hometown (or at least, that’s what I assume) in the song ”Rock Star” aka Olympia. She rages on an on about how homogeneous Olympia is. Everybody apparently looks and talks the same. Anyway, the words aside, this is a great track. I enjoy it just about the most on the album. It’s angry, but seems to just explore other ideas than Love’s apparent ire against the world. The song is a mix between pop, speed metal, and punk. It’s a great track (but too gosh darned short). A must listen (yes, wait around until the 12th track or you’ll be sorry).
Another song that begins with more of a whimper than a wail is ”I Think That I Would Die”. It’s a soft song with almost-nice melodies (we all know that Love really can’t sing…she’s got the rock star attitude and saunter, but not voice). The song has a very interesting sound varying from soft guitars and heavy drums to really heavy guitars and even heavier drums. The most redeeming quality of this track is the acoustic guitar during the “soft” portions of the song. However you look at it, this is a good one.
”Plump” is punk. Period. No questions. There’s no soft, mushy middle to this one. The good thing about Hole is that you can actually understand Love’s voice even when she wails like she does on this track. Sure, she talks about getting sick, throwing up, and for that matter milk throughout the track. Who cares. It’s good rock music. A drawback of Hole’s music is that sometimes Love pushes her point onto listeners. She overdoes the wailing at times…especially during the repetitive lines of songs. Anyway, that aside…
The guitars in the beginning of ”Asking For It” are amazing. I love the bass line in combination with Love’s rotten voice. It’s a good track, but somehow manages to bore me. The only redeeming qualities (besides being pretty darned good music) is the noise. I like noisy music…even when the lead singer can’t carry a tune in the least. ”Jennifer’s Body” is fortunately more interesting. The guitars sing in contrast to Love. It’s an interesting track with great noise and great energy. I love the fact that Hole has the most punk attitude I can remember from the grunge era…to make it even better this song is an ode to punk. I love it!
I’m not familiar with the original from the Young Marble Giants, but Hole’s version of ”Credit In the Straight World” is fast and furious with a bit of surf rock thrown into the mix. I like the sound in contrast to many of the other very loud and very, very angry tracks. It’s a good one…just like most of the others. ”Softer, Softest is also a pseudo-touching track that begins with light electric guitars and drums. There’s even a nice backing vocal to Love’s monotone voice. I like this one. In fact, it’s probably more user friendly than some of the other tracks that became moderate radio and MTV hits.
”She Walks on Me” starts with something that sounds very classic and then quickly breaks into the fastest and loudest guitars you could possibly imagine. It’s punk. Period. The song is evidence that the band hasn’t quite sold out their indie roots. Here’s a quick example of Hole’s lyrics in this track that alternates between love singing and love screeching. Geeks do not have pedigrees/Or perfect punk-rock résumés/ Or anorexic magazines. The final song to talk about is ”Gutless”. Like some of the others, it’s kind of boring to me. It sounds like some of the other songs. You can skip this one if you’d like…you wouldn’t be missing out. The only good thing about the song is the hard-rockin’ energetic chorus.
As you can see, this is an amazing major label debut for Hole. The songs are very abrasive and could be impossible to listen to if you don’t already enjoy a lot of noise or if you can’t stomach Love’s lack of singing talent. This album is both extremely emotional and angry. I can’t foresee what is in store for the band. They released 1998’s Celebrity Skin to scads of kids who were already in love with bands like Korn. That album wasn’t nearly as hard nor as interesting as this one (in my humble opinion, at least).
Love continues to spread her newly muscled, slimmed, and implanted wings. She’s a much cleaner version of herself ten years ago. There’s no evidence of the heroin she admitted to taking even while she was pregnant. Rather, we are left with a not-so-perfect singer and actress (yeah, you saw her in The People Vs. Larry Flynt and Man In The Moon). I’d like to see the band release another good album. Although, I doubt that they’ll ever be able to return to the emotional state they were in during the recording of the amazing ”Live Through This” in 1993.
I give this album 4 stars. It’s not for everybody by a long shot, but it’s high quality grunge-punk-rock-pop music. It would have earned more stars if there hadn’t been two of the songs that proved to be little more than boring to me, a seasoned rock fan.
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