The penetrating Hole

I was sitting alone in the pub beer garden last night (no, Mum, I was waiting for someone) when the two women at the table next to me started getting heavily into a deep’n’meaningless about their friendship – or, as it turned out by the end of the conversation, their former friendship. One was sipping on soda water and calmly and eloquently relaying her ‘feelings’ about the other’s narcissistic behaviour while the alleged narcissist ploughed her way through a bottle of white wine and interjected every now and then with a bellowing “You’re just making shit up about me now,” and, “Why are you being such a bitch?” At one point the crazy drunk one even managed to work the elephant-in-the-room metaphor into an insult about the weight of the other woman, who, for some reason, was still sitting on the other side of the table.

I’d been sitting there, pretending to send messages on my phone while I listened in, and it was only after ten minutes or so that I realised I could get up and end the misery of being put through this awkward public display of relationship therapy (even though the worst charge against Crazy Drunk seemed to be that she ignored phone calls from her friends when she was depressed, and I had just ignored a phone call from my mother while ordering a pint – hi again, Mum) but I hadn’t and, it struck me, didn’t want to. I was actually enjoying the experience of an irrational, slurring, self-absorbed person antagonise her seemingly normal, slightly needy (that’s normal, right?) semi-intelligent friend in earshot of 30 other people. And it was then that I understood why Courtney Love singing, “People like you fuck people like me fuck people like you” over and over again in one of the new Hole songs sent to media on a five-track sampler of their forthcoming ‘comeback’ album has been so appealing.

It isn’t because, after years of watching people yell out the ‘swear word’ in a hit song at the top of their voice at festivals (eg. “fuck the police”; “fuck you, I won’t do whatcha tell me”; “fuck the pain away”; “so fucking useless”) , I’ve finally succumbed to the thinking that hearing ‘fuck’ recorded over music and played through a speaker is somehow cathartic or relatable. It’s because dropping an illogical, confrontational, foul-mouthed person into a mannered, ordered situation is funny. And Courtney Love is that person.

Since Love put her Hole to bed in 2002 and thus lost her credibility with the rock set (for a reason only psychologists who’ve studied Original Band vs Solo Career Cred would know), her place in the mainstream – particularly Hollywood tabloid – media has remained, where other celebrities from the ‘90s music sales boom (most, in fact – well, those who aren’t dead) have faded into the crack-den shadows. While her outfits, body modifications and paparazzi-courting have something to do with it, the reason for the continued fascination is because, in essence, Love is the same fist-swinging antagonist she always was in Hole, but now she, by choice, swings those fists in a polite, well-dressed, ordered society and makes it entertainment. It also has something to do with the change in the music industry and the fact that, in the current socialist-leaning model, if anyone like Courtney Love was introduced to media, they’d be likely told to go to the back of the queue – and, next audition, maybe hold off on the attitude and give us a bit more humility.

So anyway, other than relaying the revelation that Love is a ‘top bird’, I should also relay that the five-song teaser of Hole’s new album, Nobody’s Daughter (out 30 April through Universal) is actually pretty good. The songwriting is the kind of mid-temp pop rock of Celebrity Skin with a bit of a return to their simple, bashy execution of old – nodding drums, squalling guitars (played by former Larrikin Love guitarist Micko Larkin) and Love not bothering to intonate or hit the notes, as the band’s performances at SXSW, viewable online, displayed. The clips also suggest why Love didn’t get past Hole members back on board, ordering her new, young lackeys around the stage in a manner that probably wouldn’t be stood for by Eric Erlandson or Melissa Auf der Maur, and entertaining the shit out of her audience in the process.