Pretty On The Inside-Hole (Pretty On The Inside - Hole)

Member Name: SpookyMoon

Product:	Pretty On The Inside - Hole
Date:	11/06/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 100% satisfying on the grunge/rock front.Lyrically strong,vocally heavy and musically phat.

Disadvantages: None really, unless you are not a fan of the genre.It isnt her best album but it is worth a listen.

In the run up to this album, Courtney Love married Kurt Cobain (the lead singer/songwriter of Nirvana). For a time they reigned majestically over the new grunge/rock scene.

As dramatically popular and critically acclaimed as these two were together, things were going to start to take an ugly turn for the worst. Cobain struggled with heroin addiction and as a couple they fought to keep custody of their baby after an article in Vanity Fair sensationalised how Courtney Love shot heroin while pregnant. Although she denied these allegations at the time; she later confessed that she had taken a small amount of heroin during the initial stages of pregnancy before she was sure she was even pregnant.

By 1993-when this album was released, things seemed to calm down for them and this album mediates the reflective chaos they have gone through together. In between the release of this album and her next, things would take a dramatic turn for the worst and listening to this album in hindsight, part of me feels the edginess and self-depreciating nature of this album fortells the misery to come for the cutting edge songwriter.

The album opens with the contraversial 'Teenager Whore'-giving us that thrashy grungy angry guitar and vocals that the band (and the genre) are famed for. This song is remaniscent of the heavy warbling guitar riffs of L7s Monster but dressed up with the trashy glam looks and vocal ranges unique to Love.

'Babydoll' is a much faster, thrashier song-building in pace and energy. Lyrically this song is weaker than some of the other songs on this album but vocally this song contains some kind of turbulent emotional energy that really brings it up to scratch.

'Garbage Man' is the steady heavy lyrically honest song that defines the essence of Hole as a band within their genre. Topically relevant to what had happened in Love's life throughout the last few years, you cant help but feel this song is the retaliation and social comment to how she really felt at the time.

The title track of the album 'Pretty On The Inside' is the mantra that millions of misunderstood teen girls will really be able to identify with. Sarcastic, cutting, confrontational lyrics help this song to stand out in terms of social politics in the same way that Rage Against The Machine had us all thinking during chants of 'f*ck you I wont do what you tell me'.

This album is really worthwhile if you are a fan of Hole, even though it isnt her strongest album, it is lyrically, vocally and musically really poignant and not only within this genre.

Summary: Pretty On The Inside should be the mantra for misunderstood teen girls all over!