Love digs new Hole

And Hole's "Celebrity Skin" is her very own "Sunset Boulevard" - a glamorous, campy, but ultimately dark look at life and love gone wrong in the city of angels.

Love & Co. have apparently been brushing up on their California pop since releasing its raw grunge masterwork "Live Through This" in 1994, as "Celebrity" is Hole's "Rumours," its "Hotel California."

It's a masterpiece of poppy beats, guitar-driven grooves and top-down, skirt-up SoCal folklore, all the "beautiful garbage" willing to sell their souls to the daily grind of Love's new adoptive home.

She may now be glamourous and well-behaved on the outside but she's snarling on the inside.

Inside and out, Love, with her catchy choruses and tales of big dreams and no small depravity, has dug a brand new Hole and you'll dig it, too.

A sound best exemplified on the aptly titled "Malibu" and "Boys on the Radio," "Celebrity Skin" is grounded in lush, mid-tempo ballads that still rock as they stick in your head.

"Malibu," along with the rollicking title track and three other songs, were co-written and produced by Billy Corgan, who is no stranger to the SoCal sound himself.

The well-crafted arrangements of the Corgan tunes on the album fit nicely with Love's brilliantly trashy lyrics, wonderfully displayed in the title track's "No second billing, cause you're a star now/Oh, Cinderella, they aren't sluts like you."

Hole
Celebrity Skin Geffen 4 stars Reviewed by Daily Arts Writer Bryan Lark

Love and Hole are having so much fun on "Celebrity Skin," one could easily overlook the emotional core of the album, as these are the first songs the former Mrs. Cobain has written since her husband's suicide four years ago.

"Hey you were right," Love sings painfully to her beloved co-conspirator on the very Nirvana yet extremely confessional "Reasons to Be Beautiful." "Named a star for your eyes. Did you freeze, did you weep?/Turn to gold, baby, sleep."

The band brings together both sides for some serious fun on the album highlight "Awful," which combines incisive lyrics with happy hand claps and on the similarly outstanding "Dying," on which Love breathily sings what may be the L.A. concept album's most telling line: "I've had it all forever, I've had enough." In the words of the Eagles, open up, Ms. Love, I'm climbin' in, let's take it easy.

09-15-98