Celebrity Skin by Hole (Celebrity Skin - Hole)

Member Name: Lichfield1979

Product:	Celebrity Skin - Hole
Date:	24/10/08 (366 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Celebrity Skin, Awful, Malibu, Northern Star, Boys On The Radio

Disadvantages: Use Once & Destroy

Celebrity Skin by Hole (1998)

The third and final album by Hole was delivered after a four-year lay off during which time Courtney Love had established herself as a Hollywood actress in the wake of her famous husband's suicide. Celebrity Skin is drastically different in tone to its predecessors Pretty On The Inside and Live Through This, eschewing noisy confessional angst in favour of slickly produced west coast pop with just enough bite not to piss everybody off. Live Through This had topped the end of year critics' polls in Rolling Stone and Village Voice and so was perceived as a tough act to follow. Although Soundgarden producer Michael Beinhorn receives the production credit Billy Corgan's fingerprints are everywhere. Courtney supposedly wrote all the lyrics, bless her. Melissa Auf der Maur plays bass (replacing Kristen Pfaff, who died of a heroin overdose in 1994) and Erik Erlandson plays guitar.

One - Celebrity Skin

"It's all so sugarless / Hooker-Waitress / Model-Actress" Love sings in a mission statement of her preoccupations. The big opening riff of the lead single ostensibly resembles a guitar but is so heavily layered and glossed it may as well have been electrostatically manufactured in a control booth by scientists in white coats. After pretending to snarl a little bit at the start, the bulk of the song is two and a half minutes of pure radio-friendly sugar.

Two - Awful

"It was punk / Yeah, it was perfect now it's awful / They know how to break all the girls like you / And they rob the souls of the girls like you" Love sings with double targets, attacking scum bag teenage boyfriends and dodgy Los Angeles record executives both, with a single shot of her slick corporate pop. I suppose it's up to the listener to decide if she's being hypocritical or ironic or speaking truth to power.

Three - Hit So Hard

This song's a slower number with a sweet sounding guitar line as Love sneers through the auto-tune: "He hit so hard / I saw stars." Another melodic pop-rock song filled out with layered backing vocals.

Four - Malibu

Probably the standout single, Malibu is a jangly and percussive mid-tempo ballad with plenty of hooks. Love's voice is more or less free from any posturing and sounds fairly natural save for when she grittily declares "And I knew love would tear you apart / Oh, and I knew the darkest secret of your heart." It's not the greatest singing performance but the tune is strong and the breezy bass line finely anchors the arrangement. If a relationship is going to rip your heart out, it might as well do it in a beautiful beachfront setting.

Five - Reasons To Be Beautiful

Begins with more musculature than the preceding tracks and nearly has a metallic structural approach beneath the pop production style. Nearly. Clearly this was intended as one of the songs the band could rock out with in live performance. "Love hangs herself / With the bedsheets in her cell" the singer sings morbidly.

Six - Dying

The first two minutes of this song are a bit of a drag and when it does spark into more life it feels over-produced. Melodically it's too slight and it's a surprise to see this is one of the songs Corgan receives co-credit for as it feels like a bit of a throwaway. "And now I know that love is dead / You come to bury me" makes it three songs in a row that the singer makes a play on words with her own name, and that could get tiresome very fast if it continues much longer. Listenable but skippable.

Seven - Use Once & Destroy

This has a programmed sheen to it that is probably somewhat reminiscent of acts like Marilyn Manson and doesn't sound wholly convincing on account of the dubious strength of the melody and the datedness of the production aesthetic - which is competent and clean, just not very interesting. The lyrics are uninspiring too, although thankfully they don't reference Courtney's last name this time either. By the end there are so many production layers it sounds too muddled for much of a payoff.

Eight - Northern Star

Accompanied by acoustic guitar Love thrashes the simple melody for all it's worth and is brave enough to leave the rough edges alone on this one. She's charismatic enough to rely on character rather than technical merit and this makes you wonder how wise it is to play away from her natural strengths by neutering her capacity for intensity elsewhere on the record no matter how strong the pop song craft on offer. The occasional drum rolls are weirdly melodramatic at first but eventually get a good rhythm going and after a while a string accompaniment starts to swell as well. It's quite a striking mash up of styles. "And I wait staring at the Northern Star / I'm afraid it won't lead me anywhere."

Nine - Boys On The Radio

"Oh, the boys on the radio / They crash and burn / They fold and fade so slow / In your endless summer night" Love sings wistfully of tragic pop geniuses everywhere who belong to the Brian Wilson school of hurting beauty. "I want what's yours / Oh, I'd give anything / And I'll take the pain." I'd tentatively suggest this is the strongest song on the album, and it's a MOR guilty pleasure written by Love, Erlandson and Auf der Maur themselves and perhaps musically influenced by Don Henley or Bruce Springsteen but lyrically inspired by the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley. "When the water is too deep / You can close your eyes and really sleep / Tonight, tonight." The line "He said he'd never ever ever go heavens heavens heavens no never never ever go away / baby I've gone away" is heartbreaking. Actually, I just listened to this song about ten times in a row and have half convinced myself it's an overlooked masterpiece. It's positively drenched in sunny hooks and sonic quotes that grow on you unawares and should be on the radio every day and probably are.

Ten - Heaven Tonight

This is perhaps the song that wears its 1960s Californian hippy surf heart on its sleeve most overtly and it's a warm and golden slice of pop froth. "I feel the horses, coming, galloping, in the summer rain, / Take you to heaven tonight, uh-huh."

Eleven - Playing Your Song

This reaches for a more psychedelic guitar edge and Love wheels out a gruffer rock chick vocal. It's simple but effective with a good rhythm and smart dynamics. "You're drunk on apathy / You burned right out."

Twelve - Petals

The record finishes with this five-minute, moody and broody beach campfire ballad with warm guitar tones and REM backing vocals. "I miss the sweet boys / In the summer of their youth / Tear the petals off of you / Make you tell the truth."

Summary: Celebrity Skin by Hole