The Edmonton Journal


Love's show unpredictable, disappointing


There are three other musicians in the Seattle band Hole, but Courtney Love stands alone. 

Which is how she was at the end of the show at the Phoenix Theatre early Friday morning.  Alone, draped over a monitor after screaming out a Leadbelly blues number for an encore. 

Then she hurled herself off the stage into the audience. 

It was a fitting end to a captivating, unpredictable, yet somehow disappointing performance - only the fourth for Love since her husband Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, committed suicide in April. 

Too often music gave way to sloppy stage antics, as Love searched for a cigarette or a roadie. 



STICKING TO MUSIC

When the music was good, it was very good.

Raw, powerful rock. 

But more often then not, the woman-child that is Love seemed elsewhere. 

Still, the singer-guitarist commanded attention, twitching like an exposed nerve in a clinging grey short skirt and top - often with her leg propped up on the monitor and hips slightly gyrating. 

The shock of blonde hair framing scarlet lips. 

And a voice that can blister paint.  And critics.

"I don't want any f-ing reviews that I'm going to die, 'cos I'm going to live through the nuclear winter," she said as she walked on stage.

Then the band launched into Plump, from the Live Through This album. 

The crowd of 1,000, who snapped up the tickets 30 minutes after they went on sale, surged forward and started swaying like wheat in a wind storm.



GETTING FASTER

The pace accelerated and soon bodies were being passed back and forth over the mosh pit. 

Hole, bolstered by new Montreal bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, returned to action last weekend at the Reading Festival in England.

Auf der Maur replaced Kristen Pfaff, who died of a drug overdose in June. 

The band came to Toronto, the lone Canadian date so far, after playing two shows in Cleveland earlier this week. 

Because of flight delays and problems at customs, they didn't start playing until 12:30 a.m.

Auf der Maur, 22, looked at home on stage, bending some big notes out of her bass on the song Jennifer's Body. 

"Clap, she's Canadian," Love urged.

Hole played virtually all of the Live Through This album: songs such as Violets, Miss World, Doll Parts and I Think That I Would Die.

It 's a fine album, written before Cobain's suicide and yet full of bleak lines that somehow conjure up all the pain of his death. 

"Someday you will ache like I ache," Love sings at the end of Doll Parts.

That pain came through on stage.




OPEN EMOTIONS

Love wears her emotions on her sleeve. 

And Thursday night, there were quite a few battling for space as she alternately demanded cigarettes, water and sound from her guitar from a frazzled roadie who did everything but blow her nose for her. 

When she decided to take off her shoes, she plunked herself down on her bottom, legs akimbo, and wrenched the offending footwear off like a five-year-old would. 

When her face needed a wipe, she used her skirt, exposing a chunk of thigh and the top of her stockings. 

It was charming in a childlike way. 

Almost riveting.

But it did little for the music.