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BY RICHARD MARTIN
Celebrity Skin
You'd never guess it from her brash, unpredictable antics, but Courtney Love is a postmodern genius. She has no need for the "Forgive me for I have sinned, it's been four years since my last album" routine. No reason to wax nostalgic about her dead husband. Best to ignore the incessant controversy surrounding her like woodchucks to a stump. I mean, who the hell is this about? Everyone else or Courtney? It was time for Courtney to stop playing the part of Hollywood charlatan and return to the profession that (sort of) brought her fame and fortune in the first place. Not as the brazen, disenfranchised punk of Pretty on the Inside, the indie album that launched Hole's career with a booming, raspy bite, but as rock's raunchy prom queen from hell, the image she struck on the cover of the pop-inflected '94 breakthrough Live Through This, which eerily landed on the shelves just weeks after her hubby Kurt Cobain's suicide. This tragedy peeks in from the periphery of Celebrity Skin (DGC), which arrives next Tuesday on a wave of positive hype (Rolling Stone awarded it a glowing lead review). The real issue here is stardom, with corollary themes like public scrutiny, life in Southern California and that glorious wall that separates the general populace from its heroes or, more appropriately, its anti-heroes. "You want a part of me?" Courtney growls at the conclusion of the opening title cut. "Well, I won't sell it cheap." Actually, she'll sell it for $14.99, and, shockingly enough, it's worth every penny. Celebrity Skin strips away the last vestiges of hardness from the Hole oeuvre; even the rough patches of guitar riffage sound slick, thanks in part to producer Michael Beinhorn, who once administered the same treatment to Soundgarden's Superunknown. Probably because several songs were co-written by Billy Corgan--though he receives no credit, not even a thank you, in the liner notes--Courtney sounds more focused and almost miraculously adept at gliding from boisterous choruses to nuanced verses and slipping daintily between the anthemic and the understated. Guitarist Eric Erlandson deserves much of the credit. He plays with exquisite touch and timing, lagging deliciously behind Love as she mopes through the brooding "Dying" and propelling her forward in the melodic pop masterpiece "Malibu," a song that owes its flavor to the jittery indie rock of New Yorkers like Sonic Youth and Versus. (It's probably coming soon to a radio playlist near you.) Much of Celebrity Skin is geared toward the airwaves, though it sounds as if Courtney was thinking more of the AM rock of the '70s than the alterna-rock of the '90s. Songs that contain serious messages (albeit through Love's hit-and-miss lyrics; "He's drunk/He tastes like candy/He's so beautiful" is one egregious misstep) often billow along to breezy rhythms and blossoming guitars. "Awful" deals with a young girl's struggles to fit in, yet it's set to a catchy melody that's on a par with "Walkin' On Sunshine" (OK, maybe it's not that upbeat). One exception is "Playing Your Song," a full-on epic rock tune complete with a gratuitous use of that verbal angst additive, "fuckin'." But this record supersedes such musical details. It's a cultural milestone, where a Portland street waif who became the drug-addled godmother of grunge transformed herself into a movie star and lived to write a theme album about it. It's a rise that rivals the pluckish young heroes who conquered Parisian society in 19th-century French Romantic novels, but without the subsequent embarrassing fall. Courtney has out-maneuvered Madonna. She's tamed her critics. She's emerged from an apparent waltz with a plastic surgeon's scalpel, and an even more sickening eight-page photo spread posing in racy Versace ensembles, to return as an articulate pop star. Of course, she's left many in her path. Cobain doesn't materialize directly on the album, but in "Reasons to be Beautiful," when Love sings, "It's better to rise than fade away," the play on Neil Young's famous adage paraphrased in Kurt's suicide note is chilling. Others who have crossed paths with and have been crossed by Courtney deserve less sympathy. Corgan's style shines like his bald head all over Celebrity Skin, especially on the majestic album-closer "Petals"--but did Billy really think that his old friend Courtney would suck in her ego and share the acclaim? This is a woman who campaigned for her own Academy Award nomination for her role in The People vs. Larry Flynt. She didn't get one, but the notion that she could even be considered was a triumph for Courtney and completed a transition from frumpy Pacific Northwest rocker to glamorous Hollywood star. She's opened a new page with Celebrity Skin, and it's indiscernible whether or not she meant to stage such a coup. It's commercial-sounding without kowtowing to the lowest common denominator, as so many successful rock records do. More importantly, it's a measured assessment of the type of fame Courtney has achieved that sidesteps the issues that have made her tabloid fodder, a gossip column staple and the subject of several unauthorized biographies and a documentary that more or less accuses her of murdering her husband. Maybe she's delusional or in denial, but Courtney and her band have produced a level-headed work of art, and their best album yet.
originally published September 2, 1998
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