The Show’s Over, Honey

If Nobody’s Daughter truly was nobody’s, borne by some anonymous unknown artist, and the music contained inside was all that we had to look at, we simply wouldn’t be talking about it. It is a product of Courtney Love’s delusions of grandeur, and it smells of artistic fruit well past its expiration date.

There are moments here and there, where a guitar riff sounds like something you haven’t heard a million times before, or Courtney’s vocal delivery manages to sound convincing. However, you could say as much about just about any wannabe band playing Sean Healy showcases or Whisky clusterfucks, going nowhere slow.

Unfortunately, despite the dubious resurrection of the band name, Nobody’s Daughter is not the desperate rehash of the vintage screaming Hole some of us may have hoped for; It stars Courtney Love as the singer-songwriter who can’t sing, or write songs.

When we first heard lead single Skinny Little Bitch, we tried to look past the juvenile Nirvana rip-off guitar riff, and acknowledged that Courtney’s voice sounded no worse for all the wear. In the context of Nobody’s Daughter, it’s one of the least objectionable tracks.

At the foundation of the opening title track lies a 90s grunge ballad, with a cliché rhythm, yet occasionally compelling lead. Three minutes of it would surely be bearable, but as Courtney’s breathy, dear-diary narrative drags it out past the five minute mark, it outstays its welcome like a late-night phone call from your manic-depressive, pill-popping mother. The aforementioned follow-up single is a reprieve, but then Honey and Pacific Coast Highway go right back to the grueling, whining, unlistenable dreck. Billy Corgan boasts a co-writing credit for the latter, and the core song structure does seem relatively mature among its peers. But like the title track, it just devotes entirely too much time to itself.

When it comes down to it, Billy Corgan is scraping the bottom of the inspiration barrel these days himself, despite his pompous displays of entitlement. All the recent squabbling over credit is ultimately a squabble over scraps, by artists who might know, deep, deep down, that that’s what they’re left with. We haven’t heard anything from the more creatively secure Linda Perry, who continues to write great songs, continues to play amazing shows once in a blue moon, and co-wrote five songs on Nobody’s Daughter that almost weren’t ruined.

Samantha and Loser Dust attempt to follow in the footsteps of trademark Hole bitch-thrashers like Plump and Gutless, and had the album been recorded in a week rather than a year, the visceral power they may have started with may have been maintained. After a raw, promising intro, How Dirty Girls Get Clean falls into this trap as well, trying to become the pop song it never should have been. It’s not that you can’t polish a turd. You can absolutely polish a turd. But it just doesn’t cause as much damage when you then throw it at someone.

Just past the album’s halfway point, if you manage to make it that far, two ballads co-penned by Perry, Someone Else’s Bed and For Once In Your Life, most effectively achieve what Nobody’s Daughter seems to have set out to do. They would be entirely out of place if they weren’t at least a little overwrought. However, the lyrics seem a bit more thought out on the former, and the song underlying the latter could even be a classic if a more versatile vocalist was at the wheel.

Artistically, Nobody’s Daughter is rock bottom for Courtney, and I dare hope that it means there’s nowhere else for her to go aside from up, or away forever. I dare hope that Billy Corgan is about to find his way here as well, because the last place either of these people need to be is up on pedestals of dusty RIAA certifications, where the oxygen is thin.

The magic that made Live Through This and Celebrity Skin great is nowhere to be found on Nobody’s Daughter, which pales even in comparison to Courtney’s other solo album, America’s Sweetheart. Any attempts to answer the question of where it went, or where it came from, if not from Courtney herself, are speculative potshots that don’t really help anyone.

What we can say for sure is that 2010 is not 1998, let alone 1994, and the sooner everyone realizes that, the better.