Issue #91: Hole – Live Through This

Released:  April 12th, 1994

Recorded:  October 8th – 30th, 1993

Genre:  Grunge, Punk

Record Label:  DGC

Duration:  38:16

Producers:  Paul Q. Kolderie, Sean Slade

Personnel

Track Listing

Singles

Why Live Through This is One of My Favorites

Live Through This is one of those albums that helped to define the alt rock sound of the 90’s.  It also factored heavily into the waning end of grunge, just before scores of other musicians hopped onto the bandwagon.  And while the album does have a certain kinship with the likes of Nevermind, Ten, and similar records, it also draws on Hole’s punkier roots to create another unique sound that would capture the pain and angst of a bored, dissatisfied generation.  There’s a fire and ferocity here that distances itself from the apathetic mumbling of grunge and the introspective vagueness of alt rock, and even though I never gave over too much of my attention to Live Through This as a teenager, I’ve come to appreciate how wonderfully unique it is when looking back at grunge and the more general alt rock scene of the 90s.

Courtney Love does not appear to be a particularly pleasant person, to me at least.  She seems trashy, crude, and hypersexual in a decidedly unattractive manner.  It doesn’t help that she’s created a sort of incestuous climate in the scene – “Violet” is allegedly about Billy Corgan, then there’s her very public relationship with Kurt Cobain (who is featured on the album), and then there are other assorted tales such as her and Scott Weiland spending a weekend in a hotel shooting up together.  This sort of scandal would fade over time, but what perhaps make her seem worse than she is is all the speculation about her murdering Cobain.  This rather nasty (and totally unfounded) accusation has continued to follow her around.  But for anyone who can set all that shit aside for 38 minutes, Live Through This can be a rewarding experience.

Hole’s first album, Pretty on the Inside, is a noisy punkish record, and perhaps their most famous is Celebrity Skin, a fairly poppy upbeat affair.  Live Through This sort of falls in the middle.  The band obviously wanted to add some commercial appeal to their sound without straying too far from the hard and heavy approach of their debut.

Musically, the record is about 60% grunge, 30% punk, and 10% of a Smashing Pumpkins-esque dreamy shoegaze take on alternative rock.  Guitars spend much of their time crunching and buzzing, though there are softer and melodic lead passages reminiscent of the Pixies or even some of Nirvana’s work on In Utero.  Love’s vocals are half moaned and half sung much of the time, though she also has a gruffness that comes out when she begins shouting and yelling.

“Violet” does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the album.  As the story goes, she’s lashing out at Corgan in this song, and from the loud, scratchy chorus, it’s evident that she’s pissed.  Sad yet jangly guitar fills the verses while Love shouts and claws her way through the refrain.  “Miss World” has both a grungy and riot grrrl feel to it as Love snarls beneath a rapid barrage of drum and guitars.  These bouts of frenzy are punctuated brief soft passages that provide a bit of respite.

“Plump” keeps a nice groove going (not to mention a bunch of stuff about milk), and “Asking for It” has an unnerving, haunting feel to it as it openly and aggressively deals with date rape.  “Jennifer’s Body” drones with seething anger before exploding with rage.  I don’t know what the hell she means by “pieces of Jennifer’s body,” but I suspect there’s more at work than a song about dismemberment.  “Doll Parts” is a painful lamentation on unrequited love with what I assume to be some self-image issues thrown in.  Its stagnant, unchanging nature is the perfect canvas for the oft-repeated “Someday, you will ache like I ache.”

“Credit in the Straight World” is a cover of some song from some Welsh band that I’ve never heard, but nonetheless it fits in well.  It’s got a noticeable post-punk feel to it, not dissimilar to some of Patti Smith’s work.  “Softer, Softest” is another chilling song.  I would suspect it’s got something to do with child abuse “pee girl gets the belt” (what a weird phrase) although like “Plump,” this song is full of milk references that I absolutely do not understand.  “She Walks On Me” is steeped in punk with shouted vocals and rapid riffing.

“I Think That I Would Die” is one of the most pleasant songs musically.  Love uses her voice in a more natural manner (at least for little while) instead of pushing it to its limit.  Again we have “there is no milk!” shouted over and over and I still don’t know what it means.  The song progresses into frenetic screaming and plenty of guitar noise, eventually sounding a lot like Nirvana.

Despite Love’s antagonistic relationship with the Riot Grrrl scene of the Pacific Northwest, “Gutless” fits the mold pretty well; it could hold its own against the average L7 or Babes in Toyland song.  Love may not have shared the riot grrrl ideology, but she took some cues from their sound that blended elements of punk and grunge.  This all leads direction into the next track “Olympia”…or wait, the cover, says “Rock Star”…?  The band made a last minute decision to replace “Rock Star” with “Olympia,” yet the artwork had already been printed.  Whatever you want to call it, it;s a stark admonishment against well-known riot grrrl figures, many of whom attended Evergreen State College in Olympia.  It’s a scathing criticism of not necessarily the movement, but the people involved (especially Hanna and Vail of Bikini Kill, allegedly).  Love touches on what we all come to realize at some point or another – look at all the non-conformists conforming to each other.  The line “we even fuck the same” pretty much sums up the ridiculousness of it all; I don’t know all the ins and outs of the riot grrrl soon but if nothing else, Love sets the record straight after a handful of songs that might mistakenly link her to the movement.

At some point, she directly spoke about her feelings on the subject with a reasonably accurate and intelligent comment that might just bump up my opinion of her half a notch:

“Look, you’ve got these highly intelligent imperious girls, but who told them it was their undeniable American right not to be offended? Being offended is part of being in the real world.  I’m offended every time I see George Bush on TV!  And, frankly, it wasn’t very good music.”

I find the last bit a little ironic, but for the most part I think she pretty much nailed the problem with not only riot grrrls but much of third-wave feminism in general.  These chicks weren’t fighting for equality, they sought dominance.  But hey, that’s a rant for another day.  Besides, no one really wants to hear what a guy thinks of feminism, and YouTube is filled with excellent “confessionals” from girls and women who were at one time jaded and blindsided by what feminism had to offer.

Coming back to Live Through This, it’s an album full of personal issues and demons, much of it coming from a uniquely female perspective.  Of course we hear the women’s side of things all the time in strictly pop music, but it’s not often that we get a woman’s vision of all the specific anger and pain so often reserved for male musicians, or at least not in such an accessible, mainstream package.  The music itself dances back and forth over the line between grunge and punk, and I daresay that Hole was influenced by both Cobain’s rawness and vulnerability as well as Corgan’s dreamy, poetic soundscapes.  There are also small moments and flourishes indebted to the surf rock of the Pixies, a band that both Love and Cobain have cited as an influence.  (I believe that at some point, when asked about his favorite albums ever, Cobain listed the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa as number 1.)

It’s tempting to slap a grunge label on Live Through This and lump it in with all those other influential and critically acclaimed albums that came out of the Pacific Northwest during the early and mid 1990s, but to do would be to ignore a lot of the diversity present on this record.  Granted, it can sound a little haphazard and chaotic at times (and I’m personally not a fan of Love’s voice when she pushes it so hard and loud that it sounds like a grunt), but there’s a lot of humanity and “realness” here with a marginally unique presentation.  Celebrity Skin will always be the most accessible Hole album (it’s hard to not like it; I’ve tried) and Pretty on the Inside may be just a bit too far outside the box to qualify as “mandatory listening,” but Live Through This captures an integral moment of early/mid 90s culture, and even offers up a shred of optimism as evidenced by the title.

Written by The Cubist

Back to The Cubist’s 90’s Albums

Written by The Cubist

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I collect as much video gaming paraphernalia as I can get my hands on, especially when it comes to hardware. With over 40 systems including oldies like the ColecoVision and Intellivision, obscurities like the CD-i and 3DO, and the latest and greatest including the Wii U, PS4, Xbox One, 3DS, and PS Vita, I get easily overwhelmed. Most of the time you can find me firmly nestled sometime between 1985 and 1995 when it comes to my games of choice, but I’m also having a great time seeing what the 8th generation has to offer.

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