Hole
Pretty on the Inside [Reissue]
UME
With ’90s pop revivalism at its peak, for better and for worse, I’d like to offer a harsher tonic to that era’s tepid tea in this newly reissued lot of Hole albums. No one gave Courtney Love the respect that she was due the first time around, whether it was Celebrity Skin—her band’s 1998 Cali-cool answer to Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night—or the tempered, glossy glam of 1994’s Live Through This. For both of those albums, Love was a culturally astute lyricist whose torrid texts focused on jealousy, body image, motherhood, and rage, and whose voice was like sand and glue, to quote Bowie speaking of Dylan—only here doused with kerosene and set ablaze.
Still, if you want to get to the heart and soul of who Hole was—beyond the meeting of Love and anger-toned lead guitarist/co-composer Eric Erlandson—and defer to their uniquely decadent sway, go no further than their 1991 debut, Pretty on the Inside, with bassist Jill Emery, drummer Caroline Rue, and producers Kim Gordon and Don Fleming. Expanded now with denser, remastered sound and its original bonus 12-inch (featuring “Burn Black” and “Drown Soda”), the new deluxe LP’s package is a claustrophobic, jam-packed, corrosive epic filled with awkward but sincere Lydia Lunch–like musings, gut-busted vocals, and an energetic brand of primal rock that’s more crust-punk than the era’s “grunge” tag may have suggested.
On top of Erickson’s churning instrumental mess (anchoring a decent rhythm section from this edition’s remixer-remaster) was Love’s stream-of-consciousness rants on violent sex and sexual violence, along with her faux-Poe ramblings on death, doom, and religion on “Teenage Whore,” “Good Sister/Bad Sister,” and “Garbadge Man,” respectively. And then there’s “Starbelly,” an outrageously huge song and an anomaly to all that the ’90s held dear in that it centered on Love’s obsessions while appropriating bits of Dr. Seuss, Stevie Nicks, Pagan Babies, and Neil Young. If Hole had stopped Pretty on the Inside with just that one track, this album would still be legendary. As it is, Love’s debut is so much better now than you remember it, and deserves your attention and respect.
