Welcome back to the car crash that never ends: Courtney Love, Dowager Duchess Of Grunge, has stopped overdosing for long enough to record a new album. The title is so heavy with irony, it’s beyond irony.
Nearly six years after Celebrity Skin, La Love returns with a collection that’s just as brash, slick, jaded and hollow as that final Hole offering. America’s Sweetheart is petulant and self-pitying. Worse, it’s self-righteous. Worse still, it’s musically crass. One leaden guitar chord succeeds another as uncourtly Courtney sneers and rages through her songs of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll?the three most boring subjects in the world.
“They say that rock’n’roll is dead/And they’re probably right,” Love dribbles on the opening “Mono”?the single or lead track or whatever they call it these days. All one can say is that formula punk-metal-pop like “Mono” hardly helps in the resuscitation efforts. In her head, Courtney probably thinks she’s Darby Crash meets Peaches?make that Siouxsie Sioux meets GG Allin?but the dame can’t hold a candle to lady-punks like Sleater-Kinney, who consistently conjure up clich