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Rating: If I ever met Courtney, I would advise her to die, one way or another. Her vain artistic outbursts, the experience with Hole, her acting career, her strenuous efforts to live up to the standard of American rock songwriting, both underground and not, would make sense, and maybe, even historiography would be convinced, would stop labeling her as mediocre, and for a few weeks, celebrate her as divine, just to fill a few more pages.
But if there's something I've understood about her over the years, it's definitely that she is certainly not an artificial person. She is naive, acts without much reflection, is driven by instinct and a unique brand of pathos. All this, even though it translates musically into a lack of method and basic knowledge, nevertheless results in a highly varied compositional vein, stemming from the multiple life, musical, and cultural experiences that make up her background. Love's eclecticism has led over time to very different musical outcomes, in virtue of which we can consider Hole's production quite fragmented, if not downright lacking in coherence. And in an apparent lack of unity lies the resolution of the album in question: a kind of collection of unreleased tracks, unplugged versions, and covers, in which the entire history of Hole is organically synthesized: from noize origins to foxcore, up to grunge pretensions and the overly heavy competition with the shadow of Kurt Cobain.
It must be said that Hole had strange relations with foxcore: although constantly referencing that world, they certainly weren't purists. Indeed. To Courtney, the riots of Olympia must have seemed, at some point, quite stereotypical and needlessly pretentious, judging by the lyrics of "Olympia". If Hole ever did foxcore, we might only find it on this album: "Turpentine", "Phonebill Song", "Burn Black", "Dicknail", tracks removed from the "Pretty On The Inside" tracklist, which nevertheless highlight Courtney's originality in interpreting the genre's stereotypes. Then came grunge and the "Live Through This" album, which reiterated the concept in a sweetened but, if nothing else, personal guise: we have some unplugged pieces: the famous "Miss World", "Softer, Softest", "Asking for It". And if Cobain's shadow looms over that album, we then have "Old Age", a Nirvana cover recorded for MTV's unplugged, still echoing the emotions stirred by Kurt's death and Courtney's emotional state, which seems concentrated in the repeated final "I'm sorry".
To celebrate Nirvana at that moment and in those circumstances had a very particular meaning. Just prior to that occasion, Nirvana had delivered an exceptionally evocative performance, from which a highly successful record, "Unplugged in New York", was produced, through which, justifiably, Nirvana positioned themselves among the ranks of great songwriters in the American tradition. In this sense, the tribute to Nirvana by Hole is a celebration of memory and, at the same time, an acknowledgment of their now definitive position in the rock imagination. But it's also a sense of belonging to a model, to ideals whose weight turns out to be, to this day, quite difficult to bear. A burden with which today's rock musicians constantly live and which, probably, no one will take on further.
Yet, Kurt Cobain, just like Courtney Love, were never musicians in the strictest sense. We cannot say that they invented something. Their peculiarity lies rather in an original reworking of a long musical tradition: mostly white rock, from country to punk avant-gardes. And it's in a nod to tradition that we can frame the covers present in this album: "Seasons of the Witch" by Donovan, the British avant-gardist version of Bob Dylan, and "He Hit Me" by Carole King, a renowned singer-songwriter, woman, and American: and it's also in the choice of these two pieces that the fragmentariness of this album is cemented: it is the biography of Hole, their varied, complex, contradictory world, an emotional document of a human story more than a musical one, and as such, a completed object of art.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Turpentine (04:00)
It'll come down and look you in the eye
The way you're gonna go with no place to die
My water breaks like turpentine
I sit dead in the sacrifice
You get to watch, you get to watch
Now you get to watch me die
Bless my body and bless my soul
Wrap it in turpentine
I see you standing, whatever for?
All the lads know I like it cold and raw
Who really knows where the ruby rides?
I see all the sick reflections in your ruby eyes
And I know all you devils by your Christian names
And I know all you bitches by your Christian names
You get to watch, I get to watch
Now I get to watch you die
Bless my body and bless my soul
Wrap it in turpentine
Acrid, syphilic coteries
Put your head up over your legs
Count backwards from infinity
Eat the rose and the dirt it grows in
They don't even know what hole that's supposed to go in
And now you're mad and you're slapping me
It stinks up here in the junkie tree
You get to watch, you get to watch
Now you get to watch me die
Bless my body and bless my soul
Wrap it in turpentine
Acrid, syphilic coteries
Put your legs up over your head
I've been walking to your suicide
See the human hometown suicide
I've ceased to exist on the Christmas list
I've ceased to exist in your disease
I lie right down, baby, give it to me
I lie right down
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, black was gold
Nowhere...
02 Phonebill Song (01:48)
She's a bimbo playing on the damn phone
I can really fuck you up, yeah
Because I'm the demon buttercup
You have to spit to see the shine
I see the carcass in your eyes
Before I go to sleep
Get it away from me
See the demon whore has eyes
Well, everything you look at dies
I gotta run up the phone bill
Because I'm a loser buttercup, uh-huh
Before I fall in too
Baby, I don't owe you
I could really suck you in
And you'll never see the light again
I gotta run up your phone bill
Because I'm a loser buttercup, uh-huh
Oh, I just want more
Baby, I just get bored
03 Retard Girl (04:46)
Retard girl makes us sick
Retard, poke her with a stick
Well she walks funny, kind of like a pig
Gotta hate that retard girl
See the retard girl walking in her school
In the same dress from fourth grade
See the retard girl cross-eyed in the schoolyard
Looking for the friend she made
Retard girl
Retard girl
Retard girl
Don't forget her face
Now shines the moon among the lake of fire
She's sucking dick out in the yard
Well she walks funny, kind of like a pig
Gotta hate that retard girl
Hear the retard girl do one for me
She don't think like the others do
See the retard girl squirming in the mud
Throw her in the trash can, see what she does
Retard girl
Retard girl
Retard girl
Don't forget her face
I ask her mother, "Why'd you implode"
Well, her head's so big it just might explode
And she walks funny, kind of like a pig
Gotta hate that retard girl
Hit her
See the retard girl staring at the sun
What does she see
See the retard girl stare at everyone
I hope she doesn't see me
Retard girl
Retard girl
Retard girl
Don't forget her face
Retard girl
Retard girl
Retard girl
Don't throw her away
04 Burn Black (04:56)
Now you complain and say you want the keys
Over my dead body, baby, that's where they'll be
Forget the knots around your neck
You say you remember, baby, you forget
Hey hey, this much is true
I never trusted you
Hey hey, this much is true
Now I'd burn black for you
And I try just to forget
Never, I won't
Never, I won't
Never, ever, never
Saying things that you can't hear
My dumb mouth to your deaf ear
Gushing lump, a violent smear
My dumb mouth to your deaf ear
Hey hey, this much is true
I never twisted you
Hey hey, this much is true
Baby, I'd burn black for you
No, I won't go down to it
Never, I won't
Never, I won't
Never, I won't Never
Crawl right up the wall
Up the stairs and down your hall
Now you beg and you want me
Over my dead body, baby, that's where I'll be
And you laugh at my disease
While sugar runs from my arteries
Hey hey, this much is true
I never bothered you
Hey hey, this much is true
Baby, I'd burn black for you
And I try just to forget
Never, I won't
Never, I won't
Never, I won't
Never
Starts out like magic, some sick religion
That ain't no vulture, that's a fucking pigeon
She's got vultures in her hair
And blood and feathers, they are everywhere
You want retreat, filthy and deep
A dead moon, a drunken seed
Baby, there is a room full of death and whores and truth
And I am waiting in that room
And I am sorry I did that for you
It's all whores, it's all pain
It's all disease, man, it's all the same
My little Judas, my little twin
Where you start, that's where I begin
She said, "I want it NOW!"
05 Dicknail (03:39)
It'll come down and look you in the eye
The way you're gonna go with no place to die
My water breaks like turpentine
I sit dead in the sacrifice
You get to watch, you get to watch
Now you get to watch me die
Bless my body and bless my soul
Wrap it in turpentine
I see you standing, whatever for?
All the lads know I like it cold and raw
Who really knows where the ruby rides?
I see all the sick reflections in your ruby eyes
And I know all you devils by your Christian names
And I know all you bitches by your Christian names
You get to watch, I get to watch
Now I get to watch you die
Bless my body and bless my soul
Wrap it in turpentine
Acrid, syphilic coteries
Put your head up over your legs
Count backwards from infinity
Eat the rose and the dirt it grows in
They don't even know what hole that's supposed to go in
And now you're mad and you're slapping me
It stinks up here in the junkie tree
You get to watch, you get to watch
Now you get to watch me die
Bless my body and bless my soul
Wrap it in turpentine
Acrid, syphilic coteries
Put your legs up over your head
I've been walking to your suicide
See the human hometown suicide
I've ceased to exist on the Christmas list
I've ceased to exist in your disease
I lie right down, baby, give it to me
I lie right down
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, backwards, forwards
Nowhere to walk, black was gold
Nowhere...
07 20 Years in the Dakota (02:54)
She spent twenty years in the dakota
Every single day it was black in the dakota
Riot grrrls think you can stop me
And you're forever in her debt
Well I know you haven't sent me
And you haven't sent her yet
She spent twenty years like a virus
They want to burn the witch who's inside us
Well you, you don't fuck with the fabulous four
Or you spend the rest of your life
Picking things up off the floor
She's still alive but i am sure
That all the stars belong to her
On california king-sized beds
She's wrapped in rags inside my head
This is the story, this is the story of someone who's wild
Big black rules, pearl, life
I don't remember, I forget
Oh, baby dry your dirty eyes
My water breaks like turpentine
The pee girl burns to be a bride
Your ever lovely suicide
Are they coming for me
Are they coming soon
Hey jude, hey jude
Are they coming for me
Judy, judy
Are they coming soon
I don't remember, I forget
The pee girl burns to be a bride
Your ever lovely suicide
I don't remember, I forget
09 Old Age (04:23)
And I will await your highness
I'm so high I cannot walk
And I will await
You cripple
You take away my pride
My peace, my empathy
No babies sleep on atrophy
Your unborn love and fetal stress
Hard bitter candy, legless caress
What was she for Halloween?
The ugliest girl you've ever seen
Someday she will die alone
What was she for Valentine's?
An old forgotten concubine
Someday she will die for no one
She seems to me to know
All that glitters is sour
All the lies in her place
Jesus saves
Old age
Old age
Old age
It's okay to kill your idols
Just pretend you have no rivals
We all know that she is friendless
Spits at mirrors; it's not an issue
Just remove the hateful tissues
We all know her rage is endless
She seems to me to know
All that glitters is sour
All the lies in her place
Jesus saves
Old age
Old age
Old age
Old age
And then she begs and she says "Pretty please?
I'll make her pure again; I'll make her clean"
No one knows she's Hester Prynne
Someone please tell Anne Boleyn
Chokers are back in again
Someday she won't have to fake it
Living will itself seem sacred
Someday she will just refuse
She seems to me to know
All that glitters is sour
All the lies in her place
Jesus saves
Old age
Old age
Old age
Jesus saves
Old age
(Rest in pieces) I'm sorry
(Me in pieces) So sorry
(Rest in pieces) I'm sorry
(Me in pieces) So sorry
10 Softer, Softest (03:47)
I tell you everything
I hope that you won't tell on me
I'd give you anything
I know that you won't tell on me
Pee girl gets the belt
It only makes me cry
And all your milk is sour
And I can only cry
And I can only cower
And I can only cry
You have all the power
I've got a blister from
Touching everything I see
The abyss opens up
It steals everything from me
Pee girl gets the belt
The old milk makes me mind
Your milk is so sick
Your milk has a dye
Your milk has a dick
Your milk has a dye
Your milk has a dick
Burn the witch
The witch is dead
Burn the witch
Just bring me back her head
The pee girl gets the belt
Your milk makes me melt
Your milk is so mean
Your milk turns to mine
Your milk turns to cream
Your milk turns to cry
Your milk turns to cream
Your milk turns to cry
Your milk turns to cream
Your milk turns to cry
Your milk turns to cream
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