Love applies too much gloss

The first depressing moment on Courtney Love's new CD, "America's Sweetheart" (Virgin), arrives as soon as the music begins. It's a vintage grunge riff, oh-so speedy and ferocious, accessorized with a darling swarm of feedback. Love screams "Hey!" and then she screams it again, like a petulant cheerleader trying to get the spectators' attention. But the riff is stale, the singer sounds wrecked, and all the pill-popping, Sunset Strip bluster feels canned. And so goes most of the rest of Love's long-awaited solo debut.

It's hard to imagine that a myth maker as savvy as Love didn't realize that if you mean to turn the mess of your life into art, it's best not to gussy it up with the glossiest production values this side of Pink. "All the Drugs," "I'll Do Anything," and the deadly power ballads "Uncool" and "Never Gonna Be the Same" are strictly stock metal. You can pretty much call the chord changes in advance.

But there are a few exceptions, fleeting passages where you're left with no choice but to believe that Love is the important artist she clamors so loudly to be: the opening to "Life Despite God," for instance, where her words fall out in a savage slur over an eerie, moaning keyboard and stripped-down beat. "You shouldn't have loved me, baby," she sings. "I will [expletive] you up, I will feel no guilt," and listening to her struggle to push out her angry, confused words is completely riveting. But bile and venom lose their meaning under an inch of pancake makeup. If only she'd been brave enough to go without.