regarding Hole's 'Nobody's Daughter.'

I promised my girlfriend I wouldn't knock the new Hole album, because she's the sexy boss of my heart. So here's a link to stream Nobody's Daughter, which dropped today. If you have a Facebook profile, click the "like" button to access the stream.

I'll say a few things, though:

1. It's not as bad as Courtney Love's acoustic AOL session led me to believe.

2. There are too many ballads.

3. She's still clearly writing about Kurt Cobain.

4. A small handful of the tracks are the best songs she's written in 12+ years. If Love had written a few more tracks like "Samantha" and "Skinny Little Bitch," I would have been very, very stoked on this album.

5. Oddly enough, she's starting to sound like Bob Dylan. How the hell did that happen?

Now go make your own decision.

regarding the new Hole single.

Courtney Love's reconfigured version of Hole is offering a free song from their upcoming comeback album Nobody's Daughter - due April 27 - for one day only. Click here to download "Skinny Little Bitch." It's... not terrible. Compared to, say, Smashing Pumpkins' Zeitgeist, "Bitch" is surprising. It's not as punk or baiting as Live Through This, but Love's voice still sounds really good and the freak out at the end caught me by surprise. I've been cringing over what the album might sound like, and while this track doesn't completely blow me away, it certainly makes me more hopeful.

The photo above may or may not be the official cover for the album, by the way. I can't find an English-language source to confirm it, so consider it a "maybe."