Hole 2.0 - Nobody's Daughter (the response to the response)

Petra Davis has posted an eloquently-argued defence of Courtney's new solo album over at The Quietus. I felt it merited a proper response.

I would recommend reading Petra's review first. It's a good read. It provokes debate, it's passionate and argues its case well. However, I also feel it's a good example of why academic rigour cannot readily be applied to music criticism.

In my limited experience, academics often miss the one basic rule of music criticism: is the record good or bad? You can construct  arguments around anything you desire - and Petra does it well, better than Courtney Love deserves. (Courtney, lest we forget, is a woman who has constantly scorned feminism and her own music, and doesn't consider anything off-limits if it helps her achieve her goal.) But she misses the one fundamental point, the one that towers above everything else. Nobody's Daughter is a mediocre record.

Here are a couple of my arguments against both the record and her review.

1. Courtney perpetuates the myth that female songwriters cannot be considered as auteurs more than most. This is (partly) because she (like Patti Smith) grew up in an environment that encouraged women to think that in a male-dominated world, only one woman of each "kind" is allowed to prosper. She still thinks this way. Is her continuous reliance upon male peer approval a positive role model for young women? (I couldn't give a damn about her drug intake or her public breakdowns.) That's their call, not mine.

2. As one of the comments on this blog rightly puts it, "Hole without Eric, is like Siouxsie and the Banshees without Steve Severin. Both men were co-founders and are just as important to the legacy of their respective bands as the front-women." It is disingenuous to compare Courtney's treatment of Eric and the Hole brand-name (that she's only using because she's aware there's no cultural capital left in her own name) to Mark E. Smith's cavalier disregard for musicians.

3. America's Sweetheart... look, maybe I'm missing something here, but wasn't that a Courtney Love album? It has her name on it, certainly. She can disown it all she likes - as she will do with this one, make no mistake, when it fails to shift as many units as she wants - and blame its artistic and commercial failure on everyone except herself, but... come on. It's her record!

4. Agree with Petra on that bozo from Larikan's Love who plays guitar here. And I'm glad that Petra has also noticed Oasis and The Verve steals.

5. 'Skinny Little Bitch' - clearly, Peta likes that unrequited male bastion of a rock record Exile On Main Street, and I don't. We're going to have to agree to disagree. I would comment that energy and anger usually sound better from 20-somethings, though. I'm not convinced that Courtney knows what anger is anymore, separate from drug-influenced mood swings.

6. Re: rehab records. That utter misogynist John Lennon's first solo record was more of a feminist statement than Nobody's Daughter. And way more explorative, both musically and lyrically. You can of course argue that Courtney's drawing on her own canon with lyrics that make countless references to other lyrics. Or just admit she's run out of ideas.

7. Agree with Petra on 'Letter To God'. Disagree with her on 'Never Go Hungry Again' which I would have thought is clearly (superficially) aimed at her daughter Frances Bean but more obviously aimed at herself. I'm not sure Courtney realises that, though. Don't forget how fame has fucked with her head.

8. 'Northern Star' was co-written by Eric Erlandson (as was 'Malibu'). I don't quite understand why Petra doesn't give him proper credit in her review, especially as she explicitly states that Courtney wrote those two songs (the inference being that she wrote them alone). Surely it can't be because she's seeking to lessen Erlandson's contribution to Hole, and thus justify Courtney's usage of the name?

9. None of those supposedly feminist musicians Petra mentions (Gwen Stefani, Amanda Palmer, Kat Bjelland, Fiona Apple, Liz Phair) as being Courtney's peers have any resonance with me, except for Kat Bjelland (who has never put herself forward as a feminist). Petra criticises Kat for being in a band with her boyfriend. As opposed to Courtney who writes songs with her boyfriends and brings in guns-for-hire...? Um...? Also, Petra conveniently fails to mention Courtney's actual peers, such as Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail from Bikini Kill, Sinead O'Connor, The Breeders and Kim Gordon, etc etc. Are these women not relevant because they don't fit in with Petra's arguments? Whoa.

10. Petra writes, "[Courtney] no longer deserves the frequent comparisons to Marianne Faithfull"? Really? OK. Maybe she doesn't hear it because she's too familiar with Courtney's work - but Courtney has actually moved closer, if anything, to sounding like Faithfull on this album.

Still, as I say, an interesting piece of criticism.

It isn't every day that I spend this long writing a reply.