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Nobody's Daughter
Petra Davis
, May 11th, 2010 11:24
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"On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points" (Virginia Woolf, The Waves)
With Nobody's Daughter, Love's first release since 2004's solo album, America's Sweetheart, the woman who surgically erased her familial features brings her long war against heredity to record once more. Love's work habitually contests notions of family: where Pretty On The Inside pitched itself against a list of maternal archetypes, using the language of alienation to construct new, liberating sets of possibilities, and Celebrity Skin sought to present Love as an autochthonous creation of American ambition, Nobody's Daughter reiterates Love's case for self-definition beyond the bounds of family trauma (1).
That's not to say she states her case clearly. Even ignoring the egregious sexism that dominates much critical reaction to her work, life, and point of view, Love is a tough read for many, precisely because of her insistence on defining her own context. No Love performative – and within that term I group her records, her diaries, live shows, interviews, and the many ways Love has found to interact with her fans, including, over time, her websites, Facebook page, and Twitter feed, as well as her occasional, mercurial patronage (Love understands very well the risks and benefits of recruiting from the fan pool) - comes without a lengthy bibliography of literary, musical, pop-culture and autobiographical references. Simply in terms of a demonstrable will to seed her own surrounding discourse, Love is almost peerless (2).
These days, to borrow her tendency to floral metaphor, her discourse is wilting around her. Her former peers, those women in rock, are barely still relevant within their former defining context; as Love predicted, “one by one, they fall with no sound” (3). Her last remaining touchstone is the reticent PJ Harvey, whom Love has been careful to cite in the past. Since the utter humiliation of her hospitalisation and imprisonment, and the subsequent failure of judgement that was America's Sweetheart, she is less apt to invoke such consummate female musicianship in the service of her point of view, locating this new record within a more masculine context. Classically Lovian was the decision to acquire a 'Let It Bleed' tattoo and make much of her use of Electric Lady Studios for the writing and rehearsal of this album (she was similarly insistent on Neil Young and Led Zeppelin as early references for Celebrity Skin). In the wake of her decision to duck the critical karma of America's Sweetheart by reanimating the Hole moniker for this new project, and facing public criticism from former bandmates Eric Erlandson and Melissa Auf Der Maur for doing so, Love invoked a string of dudeish bandleaders in her defence, including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, pointing out the sexism of a critique that does not recognise women songwriters as auteurs. Love seems perfectly equanimous about her decision, occasionally and hilariously referring to her bassist as 'Invisible Dave' onstage (in fairness, Quietus readers, I have two words for you: The Fall). Nobody's Daughter, having dispensed with Love's family tree, argues that Hole too is more than its DNA.
This point of principle notwithstanding, there's no pretending that the writing partnership at the heart of the new Hole, that of Love and her skinny, Skins-y guitarist Micko Larkin, previously of insignificant prancers Larrikin Love, is not sometimes uncomfortable. Their partnership is very much foregrounded: the record begins with three Love/ Larkin tracks, but the Verve and Oasis – and their less plodding progenitors, the Kinks – are simply not fitting influences for the former Athena polites of Seattle and LA, the woman who penned both 'Northern Star' and 'Malibu'. 'Nobody's Daughter' and ‘Honey' in particular recall the very worst of Britpop's rockist reminiscences. Larkin borrows heavily from Oasis for the former, in his chosen chords and structure, and Michael Beinhorn's overladen production agrees. Love occasionally joins them, particularly in the "astounding us/ surrounding us" couplet, which is Gallagher through and through. 'Honey' begins with those same bright-sounding acoustic chords that dominated the UK album charts for a decade, but Love's vocal choices are far more characteristic here – the octave interval for emphasis, the syllabically overladen line carried by her exaggerated vowel sounds, her grit, her growl (4) – though she does slip in an unfortunate “live forever” in the middle eight. It's not so much the Britishness of the reference set which is the problem; Love has a lengthy relationship with what she calls 'Brit deathrock', the New Romantic pop in which she immersed herself as a teenager, before travelling to Liverpool to absorb its dubious glories first-hand. But phrases such as ”live forever” have such weight in Love's own context that pairing them with Oasis figures seems a feint, an afterthought, and an odd choice for an artist usually so insistent on the primacy of the riff. A Britpop record from the former queen of grunge (5)? That joke [really] isn't funny anymore.
When Larkin is not dislocating Love from her proper context, the record improves considerably. 'Skinny Little Bitch', another Love/Larkin track, finally realises Love's long ambition of penning the quintessential radio-friendly unit shifter (and in doing so ironically recalls the other LA rock singles band, the Foo Fighters). The lyrics (“you staggered here on broken glass/ so I could kick your scrawny ass”) are just dumb enough for radio, though with Love, dumb always implies restraint, and like many of the tracks on this record, 'SLB' did have an earlier, more complex incarnation. Critics keen to point out the resemblance between the SLB character and Love's own worst excesses should be aware that Love characteristically reads herself into her characters to add empathy and depth. On this record, however, empathy gives way to blame, and Love implicates herself in her most vicious diatribes. Miss World, Love's gentlest creation, reappears here as Miss Begotten in 'Nobody's Daughter'; Pee Girl, the protagonist of 'Softer Softest', is reread here as the SLB. In 'Loser Dust', ostensibly a rant, Love's chant-like vocal slyly references 'Loaded', Pretty On The Inside's brilliantly ambivalent hymn to doing drugs with one's significant other (given the enormous struggle she has had with drugs, Love can be forgiven for having less and less patience with her former Neely O'Hara-isms). In the elegant and stoical 'Never Go Hungry Again', Love decides “it's time for me to be a man”; Hole fans will remember very well the mix of rage and envy this phrase implies. The late-period Hole single of the same title, a litany of patriarchy, insists “just rape the world because you can/ that's what it takes to be a man.”
Lyrically and thematically, then, Nobody's Daughter deserves its place in the Hole discography. It is, however, perceptibly the product of two distinct song cycles: one immediately post-rehab, written on the acoustic guitar Love claimed saved her life, developed and given shape by Linda Perry, Love's longtime foil and the reassuring voice behind her disastrous solo album; and another, more recent cycle, the product of more active collaboration, largely with Larkin and Billy Corgan. Large though the appetite may be to witness Love's long suffering, in the end product the latter cycle outstrips the former in terms of quality and judgement; the majority of the post-rehab cycle was co-written with Perry, and suffers for the association. Compare 'Letter To God', written by Perry alone, with Love's self-penned bonus track, 'Never Go Hungry Again': each tries for a confessional tone, but only 'Letter To God' overshoots. Its absurd rhymes (“I'm so sorry I'm so weak/ and I turned into a freak”), its bleak portrayal of the bottom, are unconvincing inasmuch as they are ill-managed. By comparison, 'Never Go Hungry Again' is simple and sparse, with an enviable economy of phrase and figure, and the voice, effortlessly describing the indescribable pain of failure (“and my wig's on crooked, and I got no shoes; I rock back and forth, and I wait for you”), retains its dignity as a result. This track is a worthy successor to 'Northern Star' (to which the phrase “and I wait for you” refers) and 'I Think That I Would Die', Love's earlier scrutiny of the unbearable.
After the romp of 'Skinny Little Bitch', the albums' high points are the ingenious inside-out pop of 'Samantha' (which, despite a certain clumsiness of line at times, at its best recalls the glorious call-and-response of the Hoodoo Gurus' 'Bittersweet', a track Hole covered on the Use Once And Destroy tour), and the elegiac 'Pacific Coast Highway'. 'PCH' adds the sad postscript so clearly expected by Californian paeans 'Malibu' and 'Celebrity Skin': Love invites us to compare her earlier hopes of “miles and miles of perfect skin” to their actualisation – the “miles and miles of regret” that bring the song to a close. The only sour note is, again, a nostalgic one; the verse apes the three-chord motif of Celebrity Skin single 'Boys On The Radio', a song so perfect that 'PCH' suffers a little for the comparison. It's here that Erlandson is most missed, for his guitars that crash and burn, that fold and fade so slow. When Larkin tries for the kind of effortlessly comely figure that Erlandson would use to bridge between song parts, his proportions are relatively clumsy. This unfair comparison aside, the song is genuinely lovely, in particular the outro, which recalls the magnificent 'Reasons To Be Beautiful', Celebrity Skin's standout track.
Nobody's Daughter is not the triumphant return Love so desired, but there's just enough Love performative here to enliven its weaker moments, and the cast of characters (including Scarlett O'Hara, Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, the Skinny Little Bitch, Samantha, the ghosts of several lovers, and Love herself) is generally well-drawn and compelling. The later-written songs are stronger, which is hugely encouraging for any forthcoming records. The album retains the hunger and the anger of mid-period Hole, while losing some of the miasma of late-period, and crucially, it does not flinch from examining Love as character; it allows her to assume a certain knowing distance from her own suffering and achievement, in a way she hasn't managed since Pretty On The Inside. At this point in her career, it's the best seat in the house.
This record revives Love's curse of the album title; months before its release, Love again lost custody of her daughter, Frances Bean, to her former mother in law, Wendy O'Connor. Her recent Mother's Day tweets on the subject were absolutely heartbreaking.
Almost. Love long concealed her enormous debt to that other self-mythologiser, Morrissey, but of late has been covering the more gruesome Smiths songs in Hole live sets.
You remember them, those feminist musicians - it was decades ago now; are they still relevant within the rock context? Gwen Stefani: clothes line, proto-Gaga queered-up pop videos, nope. Amanda Palmer: now showing her Siamese Twin act at a circus near you, nuh-uh. Kat Bjelland, Courtney's collaborator, rival and closest peer: in a band with her boyfriend, ugh. Fiona Apple, Liz Phair, good lord.
Love's voice, though diminished, seems to have avoided the fate of many former cocaine users (yes Whitney, I'm talking to you), and her melodies are still challenging (did you ever try covering a Hole song? They're very hard to sing). Though her recent live performances include a fair amount of hoarseness and the occasional bum note, Love's characteristic throaty sustain and growly decay are still present, and her tone is infinitely improved from its paper-thin incarnation on America's Sweetheart; she no longer deserves the frequent comparisons to Marianne Faithful.
It's worth remembering that Britpop was originally intended as the UK's two-fingers to grunge; it's possible Love intends the same gesture
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Erika
May 11, 2010 11:17pm
May 11, 2010 11:17pm
so it's somehow worse to be in a band with your boyfriend (ala Kat) than to spend wads of money on hired guns (ala Courtney)? Seems like you're doing here what everyone else does, putting down a woman based on YOUR perception of what she SHOULD be, and how she SHOULD go about making her music. Why are we always shoved into boxes and judged in the ways no male rocker EVER is. I'm so sick of it. You expect this BS from meathead rockers, but it's rather surprising when it comes from critics and academics as well. And it hasn't got a damn thing to do with art or music.
Jerry
May 12, 2010 2:28am
May 12, 2010 2:28am
I started posting a reply to this, but it very quickly became way too unwieldy. You can find it over at http://www.everetttrue2.blogspot.com
Petra
May 12, 2010 7:42am
May 12, 2010 7:42am
@dirigible: thank you for problematising my discourse. I'll pay you later, in catenaries and dirigibles of course.
@Erika: I read an interview with Kat & Courtney back in the day where they both joked about Kim Gordon being in a band with her boyfriend and ugh (cue laughter). Again, it was a joke, though I do think that for women musicians, being in a band with yr boyfriend raises all kinds of problems. They're problems of sexism, though, not an indication that being in a band with your boyfriend is an empirically bad thing to do. I actually have a pretty huge obsession with relationship bands (Sonic Youth excluded).
Petra
May 12, 2010 7:55am
May 12, 2010 7:55am
In reply to Jerry:
ET - I did respond over on yr blog, though it hasn't gone up for some reason. Here, I'll only say that you've misread the piece.
I had a few aims in mind for it: firstly, I wanted it to be alienating for the kind of person who turns up and goes 'BUT THE POINT IS, SHE'S AN AWFUL PERSON', which has become the stock response for a lot of people. It's an utterly asinine way to respond to an artist as interesting as Courtney, and it's also super duper fucking sexist. Secondly, I wanted it to be satisfying to read for Hole fans. There are tons of Hole-fan in jokes in it, it's true, and I'm not sorry either. It's pretty seldom these days that CL gets a review that shows any sign of being familiar with her body of work. Thirdly, I wanted to explore the ideas she's generated in and around the album as though they were not automatically worthless because OH MY GOD SHE'S AN AWFUL PERSON. In doing so, I had to deal with her as a construct, not as a former friend of yours who's pissed you off. Sorry about that.
Flubber
May 12, 2010 9:26am
May 12, 2010 9:26am
Let's face it - Petra wouuld've given this a thumbs up if this contained nothing but Courtney farting. At the end of the day, Courtney has sold whatever credibility that she had - she sorely relies on collaborators because she's not talented enough to write enough songs to fill a single let alone an album and she has to rely on the Hole name to shift product. It's not a Hole album, it's a con job by a desperate person. This isn't anything to do with sexism either; it's cultural crap and Petra continues to perpetuate the myth that Courtney Love is in someway meaningful.
Jann Venner of Rolling Stone Magazine
May 12, 2010 9:42am
May 12, 2010 9:42am
Janis, you died for this?
I hate it, therefore I hate all women.
Petra
May 12, 2010 9:44am
May 12, 2010 9:44am
In reply to Flubber:
The fact that anyone is reading this review as unequivocally positive is pretty telling. ET described it as a defence; you seem to think that reviewing the record fairly on its own merits, rather than dismissing it entirely based on assumptions about Courtney, equals a thumbs up. This is becoming an argument to overinvestment, so I'm gonna duck out, but I wanted to make that point.
LRH
May 12, 2010 11:10am
May 12, 2010 11:10am
"'BUT THE POINT IS, SHE'S AN AWFUL PERSON', which has become the stock response for a lot of people. It's an utterly asinine way to respond to an artist as interesting as Courtney, and it's also super duper fucking sexist."
What a load of shite.
Describing things that are blatantly not sexist as "super duper fucking sexist" doesn't make it so.
Maybe the album is just not very good?
Maybe she's just to drug addled to write properly anymore?
Maybe those things have NOTHING to do with her being female?
Jerry
May 12, 2010 11:30am
May 12, 2010 11:30am
Your comments are up on my blog now, Petra. I locked the keys in the car, hence delay!
Jann Venner of Rolling Stone Magazine
May 12, 2010 11:39am
May 12, 2010 11:39am
In reply to LRH:
Agreed. Talk about self-loathing - female Hole fans choose a perennial fuckup and drug user in pregnancy as their representative of female identity on Earth! Not getting let into the prom is one thing but that's no reason to go slicing yourself in the mirror.
Jerry
May 12, 2010 11:39am
May 12, 2010 11:39am
Personally, I think the defence of Courtney that the criticisms she receives are sexist is weak. I think the majority of them would apply whether she was male or female. I have sympathy with you here, though: I used to argue precisely the same defence. It just seems that times - and Courtney - long ago moved on.
And, as we've both noted on the answer on my blog, I think your list of her supposed 'feminist' 'peers' is irrelevant but pleasingly inventive in support of your arguments. Bikini Kill, The Breeders, PJ Harvey, Sinead O'Connor, Huggy Bear, Sonic Youth, etc etc - these are all Courtney's peers. And they all appeared on the same front covers as Courtney, and they all continue to have considerable effect upon both fans of rock music and feminists in 2010 - are we to assume they are irrelevant because they don't fit in with your theories?
Still, as I say on my blog, a thoroughly good read of a review.
Jerry
May 12, 2010 11:41am
May 12, 2010 11:41am
And someone else has already covered the whole fatuousness of "Kat being in a band with her boyfriend" versus "Courtney hiring her ex-boyfriends to write songs for her" comparison.
Julia Adamson
May 12, 2010 11:54am
May 12, 2010 11:54am
I always thought Courtney was a better artist than Kurt, theatre being her speciality. Haven't got the new album yet, but the bits I've heard don't sound worthy of an Enid Blyton type BBC persecution.. when is the sexist world going to give up (Courtney killed Kurt , Maggie Thatcher is a witch, Enid Blyton is corrupting childrens minds, yadayada..)
Petra
May 12, 2010 1:35pm
May 12, 2010 1:35pm
LRH: it's sexist because we don't require male musicians to be decent people in order to accept that they have an interesting point of view. Love has a point of view that's compelling to many; she has her own pet concepts, characters and conceits, and she generates huge amounts of interest. It's fascinating to me that her detractors - including you - are so vituperative. I don't spend a huge amount of time thinking about ways to put down musicians I don't like.
ET: I've explained here and on your blog (which you maybe haven't read?) that the Kat Bjelland reference was a quote from Kat herself. And no, sorry, the musicians you mention aren't Courtney's peers because they're not rock musicians. Hole is not a punk band. Surrounding Courtney at the time of LTT was a discourse about prominent women in rock, not about riot grrrl.
You know full well I don't believe feminist punk musicians are irrelevant, since you edited the magazine for which I wrote an emormofeature on Ladyfest. I can only assume you're being deliberately disingenuous for lols. Happy to oblige as always.
Jann Venner of Rolling Stone Magazine
May 12, 2010 1:56pm
May 12, 2010 1:56pm
In reply to Petra:
"it's sexist because we don't require male musicians to be decent people in order to accept that they have an interesting point of view."
Who is this "we"? In any case, perhaps it's because their (whoever these male musicians are whose names have been protected for strawmanning reasons) art reveals compelling aspects of their personalities. With Courtney there is no art, it is tertiary product to Courtney Love The Persona. I would think she is stupid, titi or no titi.
LRH
May 12, 2010 2:46pm
May 12, 2010 2:46pm
In reply to Petra:
Maybe some people treat female musicians differently, a lot of people don't.
As was mentioned before, Courtney Love would be treated by many with the contempt she deserves regardless of sex.
What you're asking for, in my opinion, is that we should overlook all her flaws and dig deeper into some pretty poor music (in this instance)because she's a woman and in doing so we'll find some kind of truth hidden there.
Is it not sexist to consider all that all critisism of a female is in some part due to her sex?
Petra
May 12, 2010 2:53pm
May 12, 2010 2:53pm
@Jann: decent art reveals more than personality.
@LRH: lol, no.
Erika
May 12, 2010 3:45pm
May 12, 2010 3:45pm
Petra, thank you for clarifying your "ugh" over the band/boyfriend thing. I felt bad for leaving an angry comment, but it gets so frustrating when you feel like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, no matter what.
And thank you for writing this. I think the album is really overworked, but that's ok with me, because it's got her on the road, performing, touring, doing interviews, and inciting these kinds of discussions. I'm glad for that, and I'm glad she's out there making music.
She's a rock n' roll confessional poet, and I am really glad to see her doing it.
Erika
May 12, 2010 3:50pm
May 12, 2010 3:50pm
In reply to Jann Venner of Rolling Stone Magazine:
No Janis died from a too-strong hit of heroin. She also bragged about fucking everyone in her band. I don't think people should be sanctified just because they manage to keel over before 30.
May 12, 2010 4:36pm
In reply to Erika:
Erika, please don't feel bad for leaving an angry comment. I completely understand your frustration, and I know it hurts worse when ti's another woman putting down women musicians. I'm sorry for leaving it in its cutesy-woo in-joke form.
DCAAS
May 17, 2010 11:13am
May 17, 2010 11:13am
The best interview I've ever read by a rock star was a Courtney Q&A in the NME where the paper caught her in a composed mood allowing her to show her articulate side. "Live Through This" kept me sane when I was 19 and "Celebrity Skin" is one of the most beautifully formed rock lyrics of the last 20 years.
It is for these reasons I would fight Courtney Loves corner and applaud Petra for such a considered review that accepts the whole singer as a compelling artist.
So she collaborates on a few songs? I'll bet a lot of her critics are same people who applaud Primal bleedin' Scream a band whose masterpiece was virtually created for them by Andrew Wetherall and Alex Paterson and whose two most talented members are Kevin Shields and the former bass player from the Stone Roses.
As for the whole "awful person" thing I happen to think Marshall Mathers, Nick Cave and Mark E. Smith are insufferable wankers who receive fawning indulegence and none of 'em have ever written a song as brilliant as "Violet" or "Softer,Softest.
All you need is Love.
Amy
May 17, 2010 7:51pm
May 17, 2010 7:51pm
Yawn... nothing too interesting or exciting on this "hole" album. Are people grasping to their youth or what? I lost respect/admiration for Courtney a long time ago, thanks to her own doings. Listening to this album is sad! This is not Hole and Eric is indeed missed. I have no love or sympathy for Courtney. Who wants to listen to crappy music because someone happens to be a "survivor" please.... what a joke. I do feel sympathy for her daughter though, being around Courtney will only cause negative energy.
Oh and Kat Bjelland is an amazing musician/artist. Let's not even compare.
Peter B
May 18, 2010 4:31am
May 18, 2010 4:31am
Thanks for this review.
It's a shame that the album has tanked, because I agree with you that the songs that were written post-Perry show some genuine promise. Hopefully Courtney doesn't walk away from making records and touring simply because she isn't able to ship huge numbers of records anymore.
Lola
Jun 10, 2010 3:01pm
Jun 10, 2010 3:01pm
In reply to DCAAS:
"and "Celebrity Skin" is one of the most beautifully formed rock lyrics of the last 20 years"
It's nice but not "one of the most beautifully formed rock lyrics of the last 20 years", come down a bit.
Lola
Jun 10, 2010 3:02pm
Jun 10, 2010 3:02pm
In reply to DCAAS:
"As for the whole "awful person" thing I happen to think Marshall Mathers, Nick Cave and Mark E. Smith are insufferable wankers who receive fawning indulegence and none of 'em have ever written a song as brilliant as "Violet" or "Softer,Softest."
You've got to be kidding.....
(and hw is Nick Cave an insufferable wanker ? He sees like a lovely, charming person)
Ben
Jun 30, 2010 10:30am
Jun 30, 2010 10:30am
Thanks so much for this. Every time anything Courtney Love-related comes out I search and search for intelligent discussion. I was beginning to think I wouldn't find it for this album (it's funny though, The Quietus was actually where I expected to find it, I just couldn't access the site at work until today).
This article hits so many nails on their heads. One thing I'd never considered was that the poor ratio of promising input to output - the dumbing down - is deliberate. I always blamed fuckwits in suits, and Courtney for asking them in the first place (shades of ET's Nirvana book). An interesting new perspective.
Jdvan17
Oct 30, 2010 12:54pm
Oct 30, 2010 12:54pm
Altered images are so much better To care about miss love is akin to tossing off in zero gravity
clotty
Nov 11, 2010 2:05am
Nov 11, 2010 2:05am
ok
tl;dr
but where's the yeast infection cream you promised me back in 2005?
love
kr user clotty
Dec 10, 2012 9:27am
This is a great article. If we really insist on doing it, we can determine that the writer is a fan and therefore the appraisal is biased - but instead we should just enjoy that it forces a different and undeniably informed consideration of the person and music with a more than gossip magazine-depth of context. I worked out from the review that I probably wouldn't like the album but I am delighted that this writing made me check myself re my assumptions about her and her work.
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Mikal Cronin
News Headlines
May 11, 2010 6:23pm
Problematising the notionality of "performative" as per this modality brings a foregroundiness to the enstructured ideological weightenment of the text qua text's originative sociological node.
Other than that this was a scarily fair, considered and persuasive review.
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