I looked forward to this album for a few reasons. One, being that it was one of the albums during the “grunge” era that I completely missed. Two, being the influence (although disputed) Kurt Cobain must have had on Miss Courtney’s critically acclaimed album. Three, being that I love a good rock album, especially if it is raw and emotional. The problem here is that, while one could argue for the album’s rawness and emotional construction, the album is just an ode to Love’s bullshit.
The one glaring exception being “Doll Parts,” which even Love doesn’t understand how a three-chord song has held people’s interest, Hole’s Live Through This is just an album of noise and bitching; neither of which are done well. Don’t get me wrong, I love noise. I even love bitching, but I do not love Courtney Love it turns out after listening to this album. I wanted to like this album. I really wanted to, but in the end found myself trying to give this album more credit than it ultimately deserves. You can disagree and throw all the positive reviews this album has garnered throughout the years at me. Go ahead, you’re not showing me anything new. I read them while trying to understand the fascination some people have with this album. I don’t care about her criticisms about stardom or her experiences with it, because, honestly, others have said it better. You can argue with me about Cobain’s influence (supposedly) and how his contribution adds to the album’s mystique, greatness, credibility, whatever, but the sad truth is that there is enough of Cobain to make this album great. In fact, if news were to surface that Cobain wrote the entire album and Love had nothing to do with it, I would deny it. I would deny it unabashedly and whole-heartedly. If after all my denials and arguments had been expressed and I found this unfortunately to be the truth, I would lose a great deal of the overwhelming respect I have towards Cobain as an artist.
I honestly don’t want to talk about this album anymore. It’s not awful. It just isn’t great. Thus, it shouldn’t qualify for this list. Again, no matter how many times I tried to listen to it, I was not struck with any sort of overwhelming sense of anything. Instead, it was just 12 tracks of mediocrity. There, I said it.
Also, for the record, I don’t believe Love had anything to do with Cobain’s death, but I do think she is an idiot. Case in point. And again.
-d.
I was 14 when Live Through This came out. I remember watching the video for Doll Parts on 120 Minutes. I never quite got it. Still don’t, for that matter. The whole package is just so formulated. Each song comes across as a b-side from one of Courtney Love’s muses groups. While famously marrying Kurt Cobain, who is rumored to have written much of the lyrical content, she also dated Billy Corgan, who has admitted to writing or playing many of the instrumental parts. Neither gave her their best material, and her lack of charisma (and voice) kept Hole from ever achieving a fraction of the artistic merit that went to the two men in her life.
I’ve tried to give this my best. I came in with fresh ears, having not heard these songs in years. Still, every judgment I had seventeen years ago seems valid today. The guitars lack the requisite energy of the raucous punk they were trying to evoke. The drums have no snap and never find the rhythm to carry out double time and blast beats. But the vocals…..Oh lord the vocals. I understand that Love is emulating the British post-punk singers of the 80’s, and that requires a certain amount of stretching the pitch or speaking rather than singing. But, damn it, know your limits! I can’t tell if this is an example of a lazy performance or just the most oblivious case of overreaching ever put to vinyl.
Let’s put aside the actual performance for a moment. Would any of these be great songs if they came from a better group? Meh….. Not really. Sure, Doll Parts was pretty popular at the time, but it hardly gets played on alternative radio stations these days. The words are pretty scatterbrained, with a message that seems to change from stanza to stanza. Nothing about the song ever finds any kind of cohesion. From section to section it doesn’t push any boundaries and go somewhere new. It just stagnates, which theoretically could be an artistic attempt to create an aural analogy for the blasé outsider attitude of the narrative. But it’s not. It’s just garbage.
Nothing else ever happens. The whole mess is just a bunch of pathetic tries at being someone you’re not. Love could never really be Kurt, so instead she settled on being the Nancy to his Sid. It’s a more fitting comparison than she probably ever realized. A wannabe former stripper latches on to as many major counterculture figures as she can, eventually finding the one who is so conflicted he becomes too weak to see through her. Except in the latter case, the man that was lost was a musical master.
I don’t know if the other members of Hole exemplify “poser” to the same extent, but let’s be honest, the story of Hole is the story of Courtney Love. Everything else there is superfluous. Maybe I am letting my opinion of one member shade my view of the entire group after all. But, then again, isn’t that sort of the point? This is such a self absorbed cry of “Look at me! I’m different! You wouldn’t understand…” that it practically defines the modern hipster. If she were 20 years younger she’d be drinking PBR’s at Bodega and calling Animal Collective a bunch of sellouts. Lame.
Instead of a cover, here’s something that pretty much wraps up my feelings at the end of the album.
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