Review Summary: Love gets angry, happy, angry, sad, oh, and angry.
Four years later, Hole return with "Celebrity Skin," an album about fame, beauty, misfortune - and death - Hollywood can bring. Love isn't angry anymore. When Love was howling the foreshadowing lyrics of "Doll Parts," she sounded almost as she was mourning, but nobody has died just yet. But in Celebrity Skin, Mrs. Kurt Cobain sounds as if she's tired of being angry, tired of saying sorry, and tired of being sad.
"Celebrity Skin" opens with the title-track, singing about Hollywood, "beautiful garbage, beautiful messes," and wether she wants to be a model, actress, hooker or waitress. "Awful" is, actually, not so awful at all, but it's about just how Hollywood corrups just about every soul it swallows. The beautiful, almost fragile "Malibu" is a single that deserves more than it's got, where "Reasons to Be Beautiful" Love brings up "miles and miles of perfect skin." "Dying" sounds almost eletronicized, and "Northern Star" is almost "Doll Parts" all over again, where Love sounds like she's opened her box of memories and, for once in this album, sounds angry. "Boys on the Radio" is a pop track which is the definite best thing here, where Love starts to mourn again, singing "He said he'll never, ever, ever go/And heavens, heavens, heavens know," as well as "He won't come back, won't come back again." It's almost heartbreaking to hear Love sing it all over again, where as "Petals," she has a new found love to sing about, her daughter: "She's the angel of/Top of the tree." The track brings the album to an astonishing finish, but not predicting what would come next.
