Screeching and squalling, Hole’s Nobody’s Daughter is born 16 years after its big sister, Live Through This, but it’s really a Courtney Love solo album—she maintained the brand but gave the band a blood transfusion, adding guitarist Micko Larkin, bassist Shawn Daily and drummer Stuart Fisher.
The sound is a continuance of Love’s Celebrity Skin, very West Coast polished and pro—several tracks begin with the unHole-y strumming of folk-mass guitars. Love still gnaws on vowels and yowls her growls, an angry, Auto-Tuned mama-cat in heat.
The Details
Daughter was released with the usual attendant Corgan-controversy, about who actually wrote these songs. But Love sings ’em like she’s lived ’em; she seems to be looking in the mirror and giving herself a good talking-to. But this is Courtney in a clear-eyed moment, with not a shred of self-pity—Oh and I don’t care what I have to defend/I will never go hungry, go hungry again.
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