The Wake

Like a bad cowlick you can’t keep flat, Courtney Love thrust herself back into the spotlight, this time without the benefit of drug-induced breakdowns or distribution battles. Love’s debut solo album, America’s Sweetheart, depicts her as anything but. Her days with Hole branded her as an Amazonian savior. Sure, she’d made some mistakes, but that just made her more credible. She was the patron saint of bored and hurting women everywhere. Listening to America’s Sweetheart, however, you can almost hear her shooting up between takes. Love has gone from a rock spectacle to sideshow spectacle. On “Life Despite God,” she sounds so coked up and broken it’s a wonder she made it into the studio at all. Instead of writing frank, introspective lyrics, Love stoops to ripping off “gabba gabba hey!” and penning cliches like “rock star, pop star, everybody dies.” Thanks for the insight, Courtney, tell me something I don’t know. To be fair, Love’s attempt at rock is more honest than some new music, but in a way that makes her failure that much more disappointing. She’s capable of making good and important music, but she’s fallen into old habits again, which prevent her from reaching the next level.