The ’90s revival rolls on with the musical return of one Ms. Courtney Love, most recently known for her train-wreckish exploits and last seen in this space losing custody of Frances Bean, her daughter with Kurt Cobain. After five years, Love has finally found a home for a new album from the reanimated corpse of Hole, which includes no original members (much to the displeasure of long-time guitarist and songwriter Eric Erlandson): According to SPIN, Nobody’s Daughter will be released April 27 by Mercury/Island Def Jam.

As a huge fan of Hole’s first two albums — oh, anger issues, how you opened musical doors! — and someone who tentatively came around to embrace both 1998′s glassy-eyed Celebrity Skin as well as Love’s flirtation with Hollywood glamour, I am of two minds about this. I’d like to see Love succeed (grunge needs more happy endings), and I can’t help but feel that a segment of the younger female population would benefit from her hard-worn perspective. But while her February performance of new track “Samantha” on the BBC’s Friday Night with Jonathan Ross was by no means an utter destruction of the Hole legacy — watch it after the jump; her wrecked voice has, if anything, just gotten more interesting in the last 10 years — I’m not sure that song is much more than a retread of old material. The increasingly pained lyrical repetition is there, but it’s no “I made my bed I’ll lie in it/I made my bed I’ll die in it.” Much like I have a hard time with her old pal Billy Corgan and his stubborn insistence on calling any group of nearby musicians “Smashing Pumpkins” (let’s not address the Guns N’ Roses issue), it’s tough to embrace an Erlandson-free lineup. Then again, best-known Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur was herself a replacement, after Kristen Pfaff died of an apparent overdose following the release of Live Through This. See what I mean about this story needing more happy endings?

What do you think, Mixers? Are you prepared to open your tortured hearts to the new Hole?

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