Imagine having Courtney Love and Billy Corgan as your parents. One's a wildly ambitious grunge diva with a love for melodrama and an unbeatable ear for an infectious radio melody. And the other - boom boom - is Courtney Love. Considering she's spent the best part of ten years plucking a stylish bass for Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, you imagine Melissa Auf Der Maur has picked up just a little about the value of human theatre and blatant commerciality.
What does she do with this knowledge? She answers the prayers of moody girls with unmanageable hair the globe over and knocks out a polished album of grunge goth. Oh sure, the likes of Korn have been trundling to the bank with wheelbarrows of bloodstained cash for years now thanks to the inherent mashability of the two genres, but is that really music you want to light incense in a darkened room with your cat to? Can you truly chew your lip at the sheer misunderstoodness of your being with so much dumb pain flying about?
No, no and thrice no. But praise Daria and light some candles, here comes Melissa Auf Der Maur, already a grunge princess and the owner of the most wilfully goth name this side of the bassplayer from Christian Gutrot, to reference artists that haven't been talked about since Specimen split up. Do you remember Rose Of Avalanche? Hugely underrated goff mob in the vein of Them Sisters Ov Mercy, since you're asking. How about Ghost Dance? Slightly harder, similar genre. Feeling a little - what's the word - scared yet?
At its best, this album is both unintentionally hilarious and implausibly infectious. "Lighting Is My Girl" surfs along on one of those irresistible choruses that Corgan would knock off before checking his bank balance, all angular cool and drive. But oh the lyrics! "The sun has crept in, away with the night, goodbye to my lover, I'm back in bed, the lightning is my girl, and promises me, to bring me to that corner, again and again". And, just before these blackened pearls of poetry, Mel affects one of those comedy Satan voices beloved of the nu-metal hordes. Nurse, the humanity!
The success of the rest of the album depends on how far up the sheer hilarity/guilty pleasure axis Auf Mer Mar slides with each song. When the melodic kicks are absent "Followed The Waves", "Taste You" - the enjoyment ebbs and it all seems a little drab and embarrassing. When she pulls a tune out of nowhere and couples it with a real hint of self-knowledge and humour, it all makes glorious, if slightly terrifying sense. "I'll Be Anything You Want" is excellent, QOTSA square dancing with Dave Grohl, smirking in gingham dresses and heavy eye make up. "Would If I Could" manages to be light but loveable, kind of Sixpence None The Gothier.
It's not, in the final reckoning, a terribly important and wildly impressive record. Brody Dalle has no need to glance over her shoulder just yet. But as the Evanescene Fan Club are surely spluttering even now, it only takes a couple of well placed and skilfully marketed radio singles and bang you've got a Grammy. Release the street teams!
