Bridging the punk rock of 1991′s Pretty on the Inside and the (mostly) radio-friendly fare of 1998′s Celebrity Skin, Hole’s second album fully embraces the grunge style, spawning multiple singles. All of its dozen songs hover close to the three-minute mark, making for a fairly digestible listening experience in spite of the anger, directed inward and outward, which fuels each track. Allusions, similes, and metaphors are abundant, threaded through with confessions (or facsimiles thereof) and reactive lashings.
The band displays an impressive tightness of interplay and instrumental support, with Courtney Love’s vocals catching the anguished highs and resigned lows in effective form. Moody bridges and grinding assaults break up the standard grunge formations, with the percussion (which were redone, allegedly without informing drummer Patty Schemel at the time) in particular forming some of the most engaging moments. Though rumors of various kinds have emerged around the album’s creation in the years following its release, Live Through This remains Hole’s most well-rounded and cohesive album to date, with little of its initial impact lost.
Opening with a wishful litany of fatal bad luck (”I Hope You Die”), and continuing on through songs about vaginas, being a loser, breasts, what would be done with godlike powers, and blowjobs (cunnilingus having been covered in the previous album’s “Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny”), the Bloodhound Gang’s biggest album revels in juvenalia and pop culture references (e.g., “One thumb in Pulse of the Nation / One thumb in your girlfriend’s ass”), building verses around name-drops and a deep well of sexual phrases, euphemistic and not.
With song sounds ranging from Homer Simpson yelling “Holy macaroni!” on repeat, through a looped lift of the opening guitar riff of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” dovetailing into the chorus of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”, to a phone-call between the song-writer and his mother on the topic of “words that rhyme with vagina,” (part of a song [”Three Point One Four”] which ends with the word “vagina” sung in falsetto eight times in a row), the album is packed with samples. But the band supplies their own instrumental material where necessary, whether than entails hiring a pair of professional vocalists just to record them singing “Recognize!” and “How do you let someone know if your hotcakes are selling well?”, crunching out a bass riff, or letting DJ Q-Ball take off with some turntable scratching.
Unfortunately, much of the non-sampled musical components, including keyboards, drums, and bass, end up sounding weirdly muddy in the mixing, an odd quality in a record which otherwise evidences so much attention to the production work. And while the group shows an impressive way with crafting hooks and accelerating vocal flow (the latter especially shows in “Right Turn Clyde”), the lyrics (e.g., “All in all / You’re just another dick with no balls / balls / balls / balls” or
“Got shot down / Like Larry Flynt / Felt like shit / Like a bowel movement”) could only be sung along to without embarrassment by those with a middle-school mind-set or superb sound-proofing
With a redneck monologue about truck stop sex set to a tinny Casio keyboard loop (”A Lap Dance is So Much Better when the Stripper is Crying”) finishing out the album before a glammy hard rock cover of ‘60s pop group The Association’s “Along Comes Mary” leads into a series of recording studio outtakes as the hidden track, the album successfully retains its contrary-minded approach to the shape of a hit album to the end. While the form and style of its break-out hit “The Bad Touch”, with its commingling of sex and pop culture (”Then we’ll do it doggy-style / So we can both watch X-Files”) gives a good general idea of the larger album’s shaping, the persistent weirdness (due in no small part to the undercurrent of near-nihilistic lethargy and ambivalence in the face of giddy sophomorism) delivers something a bit off in its aftertaste. At the same time, it’s an excellent snapshot of the American mind-set immediately preceding the 21st century, when something so gleefully profane could be such a big hit.
On their second album, the duo of The Crystal Method polish up their big beat formulae from the first LP while downplaying the slower, more texture-focused aspects in favor of heavier vocal sample usage (as shown in “Wild, Sweet & Cool” and “Name of the Game”) and clear beat patterns with sub-layers that become deceptively dense when they really get going. In addition to
occasional turntable scratching, the album also finds the group incorporating more near-rapping delivery for the lyrics. From the switching between lilt and Linkin Park-ish yowl from
Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland
for “Murder”, to the go-for-it commercial bravado of “Name of the Game”, this is likely the most telling sign of the time from which it came.
While the rap efforts are underwhelming, they don’t veer into outright cringeworthiness too often, and the instrumental side provides laudable efforts to support their weakness. But the fully-instrumental tracks show the group at their best, following and escalating beats and brazen keyboards into deep, heady grooves. The overall shift towards faster material does have a few bumps to it, but unfortunate as it is to lose the more atmospheric studies the band’s first album pulled off so well, it clarifies the suggestion that their capabilities were being pushed into fresh territories. It may not be an even trade, but the confidence practically oozes from Tweekend’s most active songs, and the one-two finish of “Blowout”‘s towering loop-stacks and “Tough Guy”‘s octane cool-down is
just about enough to earn full forgiveness of the album’s faults.
Scrambled Brains 