Hole

Though given the Hole moniker late in its five-year creation period, Nobody's Daughter, with its intensely personal and cathartic tone, is very much a product of the always-controversial life and times of Courtney Love, the only original member in the current line-up. At times, with parts written and played by, among others, Billy Corgan, and through Michael Beinhorn's big production, it recalls the glossy and (rightly) lauded Celebrity Skin, and with Love delving headfirst back into her tumultuous past, has the uniquely tortured/empowered soul and grit that made Live Through This such a touchstone in the alt-rock heyday. Opening the album is the slow-burning title track, lush with strings and haunted by Love's low, lurking vocals, an epic, melancholic folk rock stunner that renounces her parentals, and that's just the start of the purging. Los Angeles ("Pacific Coast Highway"), Kurt ("Honey," Samantha"), drugs ("Someone Else's Bed") and her wrongs ("Letter to God") are given a raw, emotional Dear John, all backed by a solid-but-perfectly-imperfect (and sometimes overwrought) soundtrack. Finally vowing, in an almost-protest song, to "never go hungry again," Love has never sounded so composed, exuding an almost alarming peacefulness that, ironically, signifies anything but the end.