rock.pop :: reviews

Courtney Love :: America's Sweetheart

Virgin, February 2004

by Tom Donnelly

Throughout her life in the public eye, Courtney Love has been viewed not so much as a person as a series of paradoxes: rock star/ junkie, grieving widow/ rock star, opportunist/ phony, movie star/ loving mother, and most recently, junkie/ unfit mother. The failure of Celebrity Skin, the far too polished follow-up to the brilliant Live Through This, coupled with the subsequent dissolution of Hole, spurred rumors that the widow Cobain was off the music map. Now Courtney’s back with her solo debut, the ironically titled America’s Sweetheart. While the record does prove she’s pretty well got everything together upstairs, it’s obviously also Courtney’s attempt to once more attain musical relevance. On this count, she sadly, gloriously, ambitiously, falls short.

“Mono” starts things off excellently, and finds Courtney in her best form, lyrically and vocally, since “Violet;” “Can’t make a hooker come/ And an eight-ball isn’t love” she shrieks, and there’s a palpable desperation in her words on these dirty truths. For a moment, we’re duped into thinking we’ve got the old Courtney back- but only for a moment. She follows “Mono” up with the utterly silly “But Julian, I’m a Little Bit Older Than You,” a paean to the (actually much younger) Strokes’ frontman seemingly in title alone. A portion of the song is spent referencing punk classics, a bad move, as it only serves to remind the listener how bad what they’re actually listening to is.

And so it goes. “Sunset Strip” is nearly six minutes of nonsense. “Life Despite God” is a bizarre, near rock/ rap hybrid that wouldn’t be out of place on the next Limp Bizkit album. To call it utter rubbish is complimentary hyperbole. The worst crimes are committed on the double shot of “I’ll Do Anything” and “Hello,” two songs full of shameless derivativeness and faux nihilism- Nirvana lite, if you will. Somewhere, grunge is spinning in its grave.

However, a few tunes (other than “Mono,” easily the best of the bunch) save this from being a total loss; “Almost Golden” is full of the smooth whispers and ragged screams that were Courtney’s trademark in her glory days. On two pretty, near-ballads she lets the facade drop, and we hear how strong the album could have been. “Yeah I am gonna lose/ If I tell the truth… I wanna be uncool” she sings on “Uncool,” a haunting, lilting track that illustrates what Courtney can do when she lets her guard down. Album ender “Never Gonna Be the Same Again” is near perfect. It resonates with honesty and real feeling, and the replay factor hovers around nine. The thing is, we’ve already waded through too much crap to get to this gem. “Do you know?/ Can you feel it?/ Do you feel me?,” she asks. The answer’s yes, Courtney, we can; it’s just too little, too late.

2004 1-42 Online