Is this band good: Hole

A regular feature where we—using scientific, circumstantial, and anecdotal evidence—determine once and for all whether a band is good

Welcome to “Is This Band Good?”, a semi-regular feature where I, with the help of a knowledgeable and accomplished musician, try to determine—quantitatively—if certain bands are actually good. 

Check out past entries on Cake, Soul Coughing, B-52s, Ben Folds Five, They Might Be Giants, late ‘00s indie darlings, Social Distortion, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Korn and Oingo Boingo.

THE DEFENDANTS: Hole

Hole doesn’t need an introduction. You either love them or hate them, and if you hate them, it’s a good chance that you’re a man. 

Hole is often a litmus test for dudes, bros, gents, men—a measure with which to gauge acidity. Yes, there are many aesthetic reasons to dislike Hole’s music, but that’s often not what’s on the table when you ask someone whether they like Hole, because the question everybody hears is: do you like Courtney Love? 

For men who only see her as the person who figuratively (and in some cases, literally) robbed the world of Kurt Cobain, or the person who did heroin while pregnant, or the person who still hoards the majority of Nirvana’s publishing rights, or a person who has a penchant for saying unhinged and insufferable shit during interviews, that answer is a resounding no. No, my bruv, men do not like Courtney Love. 

This tainted lens makes it difficult to objectively critique and analyze Hole (let’s all hope that you never hear that sentence from your doctor), but the band’s music is way more than a culmination of a personality, even if the personality is what carried Hole into superstardom. Throughout the ‘90s, Love—and by extension, her band—had to fight against an unkind industry and a hostile public that refused to believe that she wrote her own songs. For these reasons, there’s an intense amalgam of ambition and calculation in each Hole album. Theirs is an intensity that can sometimes be grating, but if it was absent, would we even care? 

Which brings us to the eternal question: Is Hole good? 

PROSECUTORS 

Jamie Gadette: Hello! Longtime reader, first time contributor here. I’m supremely honored to participate in this series. I’m glad I chose Hole and not Everclear but stand by my opinion that we should eventually cover the Bouncing Souls. 

I attended the University of San Diego for one year. It wasn’t a good fit. I made it through that tough time by going to so many punk shows with my roommate at various nearby rec centers and 18+ venues, including Canes. 🤘🏼🤙🏽

I worked with Ryan a million years ago when I was the Music Editor at Salt Lake City Weekly. Some would say I taught him everything he knows and no I don’t have any proof to back my claim. I was also a programmer and on-air host at 90.9 FM KRCL, a non-profit community radio station based in Salt Lake City, where I still sub on occasion. Always a thrill to jump back in.

Ryan Bradford: I write this newsletter, and whatever you think of it, it’s Jamie’s fault. Jamie’s made me. She taught me everything I know about this type of writing. Without her tutelage when I first started out, I probably would’ve given up. So yes, you can blame Jamie for this, me, everything. 

BACKGROUND 

Jamie: It’s hard to be objective about Hole.

Listening to Live Through This sends me straight back to 1996. I’m driving away from a Super Bowl party. I don’t like football. I don’t like most of the people there. Why did I go? It’s getting late and it’s a school night and I’m anxious and unfulfilled. I turn up the stereo to scream along with Courtney Love, “Gutless! You’re gutless!”

The album is pure catharsis. What better way to release the demons of a misogynistic suburban wasteland than to blast Love’s unapologetic roar? Every line is an unhinged battle cry and I was fully on her side. I wasn’t a stripper and my childhood was pretty well adjusted, but I could relate to Love so hard.

Speaking of relatable, Billie Eilish and her brother Phineas were recently on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend (which is a great listen) and Phineas mentioned that he’s always seething with rage. It might not seem like it because he comes across as pretty unflappable.

But hey, that’s me, too! 

Fine on the outside; seething with rage on the inside.

And that was especially me in middle school and high school, when I fell in love with Hole.

Live Through This hit when I realized that I too was deeply angry. I didn’t know what to do with my rage, because I was rather shy and more or less a rule follower. So I sought musicians as proxies to my rage. They could shout it to the rafters, and I could sing along in the confines of my automobile, trying my best to master stick shift while singing until my throat hurts.

Back then, I wished I was blonde and perfect and had a bigger house like my wealthy classmates. But I was also somehow cognizant of the fact that high school isn’t everything, and that it’s good to be different. The proof was on the airwaves and MTV. There were freaks and weirdos and very imperfect women sharing some unpopular opinions without censoring themselves. Fuck convention! Fuck perfection! Fuck the cliques that are actually quite boring.

Which is why a song like “Rock Star” won me over.

“Well I went to school/ in Olympia/ where everyone’s the same”

Just sub Olympia with Salt Lake City in the 90s…

“We look the same / We talk the same yeah /We even fuck the same”

And I’m the protagonist of this song now.

“Don't you PLEASE / Make me real, FUCK YOU / Make me sick, FUCK YOU / Make me real, FUCK YOU!”

Hole, along with Belly, Ani Difranco, Sarah McLaughlan (seriously!), Bikini Kill, TLC, and Salt N Pepa, helped me articulate and be proud of my complicated feelings. They encouraged me to speak up, even if my opinions were dismissed by dudes.

Ryan Bradford: I was 10 when I bought the cassette of Hole’s Live Through This. I was just developing my own music-fan agency (as opposed to just listening to what my parents played) and had become obsessed with my older brother’s Nirvana CDs. I was still an alternative music novice when Kurt Cobain killed himself, so I wasn’t emotionally impacted by his death, but it did galvanize everything related to Nirvana in my brain as “important.” 

Thus, Hole was important. When I heard “Violet” for the first time on X96 (holla, SLC) I became obsessed. I wasn’t too into the other single on the radio, “Doll Parts”—which I thought was boring—but, like Jamie, I was enthralled by the rage, especially on “Violet.” It felt more raw than the muddiness of everything else on the radio. “Violet” was direct and urgent—qualities that I’d later seek out as I got into punk in high school.

I bought the Live Through This cassette at K-Mart. My obsession with acquiring new music was so fervent that I would often buy cassettes instead of waiting a week for enough allowance to buy the CD (pretty sure my allowance was $5 a week). 

The same day I bought the cassette, my mom had rented a large 15-20 person van because she was a social worker and I think she was taking a group of at-risk teens to a retreat the next day. But the purpose of the van isn’t as important as my sheer fascination with it. For whatever reason, the fact that this large vehicle was parked in our driveway thrilled me. I just wanted to sit in it, and my mom eventually obliged. She unlocked it and left me alone with my Walkman and my new cassette tape. I remember moving from seat to seat, while a developing rainstorm splattered the van’s windows and Live Through This blasted my ears. 

But I loved “Violet” so much that it was hard for me to move on. The other tracks just didn’t hit as hard, so I kept rewinding. I think I spent an hour listening to that song on repeat, and then I was over it. I didn’t even listen to side B, and it would be many, many years before I heard the back half of Live Through This. 

Skip ahead a decade or so to when I was a shitty 20 year old, and one of the shitty things about me (one of many) was that I believed that Courtney Love hired a person to kill Kurt Cobain. I mean, I don’t know if I ever truly believed it, but it was something I liked to say. When you’re a shitty 20-something dude, you’re going to have shitty thoughts and say shitty things, and in this case, I really thought I was subversive or edgy or something. And at some point, I got it in my head that Courtney Love was a malicious boogiewoman hellbent on ruining Nirvana and Foo Fighters for me and The Bros™. Even if she hadn’t literally killed Kurt Cobain, she might as well have, despite the fact that Cobain experienced suicidal ideation throughout his life (according to the Montage of Heck documentary) and even had I Hate Myself and I Want to Die as the working title for In Utero (which was meant to be a joke, but still). 

But then I got older, wiser, and recognized how misogynist this conspiracy theory is. I no longer believe Courtney killed Kurt, but I also haven’t dug into Hole’s catalog.

Until now. 

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 

Ryan Bradford: Hole’s ‘90s output—which, for all intents and purposes, is the only iteration of Hole—perfectly mirrors the trajectory of alternative music throughout the decade. That’s not to say that the band was responsible for it, nor did they innovate it. But they harnessed it. 

Their 1991 debut, Pretty on the Inside, fits in with the punk-era of grunge, before the genre was polished and commodified. I’m sure if I listened to Pretty On the Inside in that large, rented van, it would’ve confused and terrified me. It’s abrasive as hell, full of plodding rhythms, and visceral lyrics. For someone used to alternative radio, Hole’s debut is pretty unlistenable. 

But now I think Pretty On the Inside is a fascinating and—in its own way—enjoyable album. Songs like “Teenage Whore” and “Good Sister - Bad Sister” are so over-the-top and grotesque that it sometimes feels like they're a parody of ‘90s miserablism, but I can’t deny the power of the songwriting. Each song on Pretty has at least one lyric that’ll make you recoil. Say what you will about Love, but her ability to get under your skin is testament at her power as a songwriter. 

Slut kiss girls
Won't you promise her smack?
Is she pretty on the inside?
Is she pretty from the back?

The fact that this album was produced by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon is a testament to Hole’s aesthetic confidence from the jump off. It’s not an album meant to be savored, but one meant to terrify your parents and other normies. It’s an endurance test, and if you pass, you’re cool. I can only agree with Love’s assessment of Pretty on the Inside from this Spin’s 2014 oral history of Live Through This: 

“Our first record [1991’s Pretty on the Inside] wasn’t supposed to be melodic. It was supposed to be a really raw expression. It wasn’t designed to sell any records. It was designed to be cool, really. And I don’t mean that in a super contrived way, but sort of contrived. We had a skeletal band, not very skilled. The next record was going to be more commercial.”

There may not have been a more perfect time period for Live Through This to come out. Recorded in 1993, Hole’s second album encapsulates a brief but golden era when grunge and punk had financial backing from record companies and were encouraged to push their artistic visions. These were the years that we got Nirvana’s intentionally abrasive In Utero, Pearl Jam’s left-field Vs., and Smashing Pumpkins shoe-gazey Siamese Dream. These albums are so ingrained in pop-culture now that it’s strange to think of them as ambitious, but it’s hard to imagine record companies now would throw millions at artists to make similar artistic leaps. 

Live Through This might have been the album to most benefit from these rare commercial circumstances. There’s really not a bad thing to say about Live Through This. In terms of ambition, it’s the sound of a band aiming for the bleachers and then landing in the parking lot. The musical growth is astounding, and often attributed to the recruitment of bassist Kristen Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel—two talented musicians who gelled with Love and could translate Hole’s rage into melody. Love also worked tirelessly to improve her musicianship for Live Through This, which she commented on during this Rolling Stone interview before the album’s release: 

"It's so different that there should have been a record in between…We played on Halloween, and all these weird purists showed up. Total fans, but every time we'd go into one of our pop songs, they'd start chanting, 'Don't do it! Sellout!' Girls were throwing riot grrrl zines at me and stuff. I was like 'Uh, I'm really glad you're here, girls, but check it out: I can write a bridge now.' 

The difference between Pretty On the Inside and Live Through This is night and day. Well, more like night and lesser night. That is, Live Through This is fucking dark. Nearly each song is a horror show—with topics covering sexual violence (“Violet”), murder (“Jennifer’s Body”), and motherhood (“Plump” —which contains one of the most visceral openings of any song: Shakes his death rattle/Spittle on his bib/And I don't do the dishes/I throw them in the crib). 

What sets Live Through This Apart from the other monster albums of the era is how personal it is. There’s an intimacy of these lyrics that feel like we’re reading something we shouldn’t. Kurt Cobain was a good songwriter, but Love was better—at least on Live Through This. I don’t think Cobain ever allowed himself to be as vulnerable as Love is on this album, and that’s why I think it’s ridiculous to think he wrote any songs on this album (Love and Cobain also had a very competitive relationship, which could be the topic of a whole newsletter, but I honestly don’t think Love would’ve let him write for her if he wanted to). 

I’ve since come around on “Doll Parts,” too. What a song. It’s one of the most emotionally honest I’ve ever heard. Prior to it, had a woman ever been allowed to be so sad, selfish, and spiteful on the radio? Thematically, it’s similar to Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps” in that they’re both about women in love with publicly adored men, but instead of demurred sorrow, “Doll Parts” ends with vengeful rage, which I’m sure makes some people (men) uncomfortable.

(Btw, the cover art for Live Through This is probably my all-time favorites.) 

So, if Pretty On the Inside represents ‘90s punk/grunge’s introduction, and Live Through This represents the genre’s refinement, then Celebrity Skin is the genre’s exploitation. For the first time in their career, it feels like Hole is doing the record industry’s bidding, not the other way around.

Celebrity Skin is a perfectly average album. Some of the songs are very good, like “Malibu” which sounds like it could’ve also been a dreamy rock hit in the 2010s, alongside Best Coast or  Courtney Barnet (“Malibu” also has my favorite Hole lyric: “How are you so burned when you’re barely on fire?”). 

But there’s a handful that are awful. I can’t tell if “Celebrity Skin”—arguably Hole’s biggest single—is any good or irritating due to how many times I’ve heard it, but I always skip it. The rock-to-bubble-gum-pop dynamic just feels so phony to me. I like the song “Awful”, but I also like Lifehouse’s “Hanging By A Moment”, and both have the same generic late-‘90s anthemic vibes. 

And how did the “Reasons To Be Beautiful” end up on the album? It’s heavy and slow without a hint of intrigue. A complete filler track. And shame on whoever mixed “Northern Star”, which seems to be recorded for the sole purpose of making Courtney Love’s vocals sound terrible. 

“Boys on the Radio,” though, is polished Hole (uhhhh) at their best. If anyone needed proof that Courtney Love loved Kurt Cobain, it’s this song. It’s the most touching thing in their catalog, and regardless of everything Love has said or done, it’s evidence of the humanity that exists within Love despite society’s many attempts to erase it.

THEORETICAL EVIDENCE 

Jamie: To your point about men hating Love, let’s address the elephant in the room. Many people (again, mostly dudes) are adamant that Kurt Cobain wrote Live Through This. They love to undermine her—and guitarist Eric Erlandson’s—songwriting contributions because they just can’t admit such a flawed, controversial figure in Cobain’s short life might have actually had talent. Surely she was just riding his coattails… 

[eyeroll]

Honestly, who cares? The subject matter at the heart of the album is very clearly ripped from Love’s soul and laid bare for the world to destroy. Cobain wasn’t sexually assaulted while crowd surfing (“Asking for It”) and he didn’t tear Billy Corgan a new one for being an allegedly terrible boyfriend (“Violet”). If Cobain did help Love, he helped elevate her work. HER work. I don’t know what additional evidence anyone needs to acknowledge her unique contributions. 

Plus, how many brilliant pop songs were penned by a ghostwriter? Dianne Warren has written a gajillion hits for household names and is respected as hell. Rhianna has very few songwriting credits and I dare you to question her artistry. When it comes to indie rock and grunge, we expect a certain amount of “authenticity” to justify a band’s merit. To accept assistance or inspiration is to sell out. Full stop. It’s a real double standard.

I’m going to get some heat for this opinion, but I stand by it!

Love is a good musician. She doesn’t have a polished voice, and neither did Cobain. Erlandson was a solid guitarist and songwriter. Patty Schemel was an excellent drummer who, like many drummers, laid a strong foundation for the rest of the group. She held things together on Live Through This even as she battled her own demons in the form of drug addiction, only achieving sobriety long after she left the band. Schemel’s absence is notable on Celebrity Skin, which is slicker and, well, rather gutless compared to Hole’s previous albums.

Other proof points:

• They nail the loud, quiet, loud aesthetic

• The way Love plays with melody is refreshing

• Builds and releases tension so the explosion sneaks up on you

• Softer vocals are the equivalent of a snarky shrug

• Btw, did you know that Love sings in what is called a Contralto? So fitting for someone so contrarian

VERDICT:

Jamie: Personal experience aside, I objectively believe Live Through This is a solid album. That record alone allots Hole a lifetime achievement award. Is the band still good? It’s complicated.

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