AMG Review of Nobody's Daughter

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Resurrecting the Hole moniker for 2010’s Nobody’s Daughter is simply a matter of business for Courtney Love: her 2004 solo album America’s Sweetheart flat-lined, so her assumption is that the name Hole carries some cachet and will raise her profile and, in turn, her sales. That neither Love’s chief collaborator Eric Erlandson nor her lieutenant Melissa Auf der Maur is to be found on this purported reunion is of no serious commercial consequence -- for most observers, Courtney Love was Hole just like Debbie Harry was Blondie, her supporting cast seemingly meaning little to the end project. Of course, the ironic thing is that Love is more dependent on the kindness of others than most singer/songwriters, her work taking on the characteristics of her collaborators -- and in the case of Nobody’s Daughter, they include longtime (and now former) friend Billy Corgan and Michael Beinhorn, two of the architects behind 1998’s Celebrity Skin, the one time Courtney came close to being the genuine crossover rock star she so desperately craves to be. Trace elements of the SoCal sheen of Skin can catch the light on Nobody’s Daughter, but despite its billing as a Hole album, this record wasn’t conceived as a band effort: its genesis is as the second Love solo album and it can’t shake its inward-leaning singer/songwriter roots no matter how many times a “Skinny Little Bitch” is grafted onto the final product. That affected snarl was pulled as the first single in hopes of selling the album as a return to rock, but it’s impossible to disguise the folk-rock swirl at the heart of Nobody’s Daughter.