Resurrecting the
Hole moniker for 2010’s Nobody’s Daughter is simply a matter of business for
Courtney Love: her 2004 solo album
America’s Sweetheart flat-lined, so her assumption is that the name
Hole carries some cachet and will raise her profile and, in turn, her sales. That neither
Love’s chief collaborator
Eric Erlandson nor her lieutenant
Melissa Auf der Maur is to be found on this purported reunion is of no serious commercial consequence -- for most observers,
Courtney Love was
Hole just like
Debbie Harry was
Blondie, her supporting cast seemingly meaning little to the end project. Of course, the ironic thing is that
Love is more dependent on the kindness of others than most singer/songwriters, her work taking on the characteristics of her collaborators -- and in the case of Nobody’s Daughter, they include longtime (and now former) friend
Billy Corgan and
Michael Beinhorn, two of the architects behind 1998’s
Celebrity Skin, the one time
Courtney came close to being the genuine crossover rock star she so desperately craves to be. Trace elements of the SoCal sheen of
Skin can catch the light on Nobody’s Daughter, but despite its billing as a
Hole album, this record wasn’t conceived as a band effort: its genesis is as the second
Love solo album and it can’t shake its inward-leaning singer/songwriter roots no matter how many times a “Skinny Little Bitch” is grafted onto the final product. That affected snarl was pulled as the first single in hopes of selling the album as a return to rock, but it’s impossible to disguise the folk-rock swirl at the heart of Nobody’s Daughter. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine