Last big band to wait as long as Hole (pictured) between albums was the Stone Roses, who never fully recovered from the delay.

Hole Widen Gap Between Last Release And Latest

Four years after releasing smash-selling breakthrough album, Courtney Love and gang are still record-less.

Senior Writer Gil Kaufman reports:

Fans of Courtney Love and her grunge-redux band Hole have been waiting four years for the follow-up to the group's breakthrough album, Live Through This.

Now, just as it seemed that the wait was coming to an end, it appears that the faithful will have to wait a bit longer.

While the album is reportedly close to being mixed, it looks like the still-untitled affair won't hit shelves until late summer/early fall at the earliest due to another in a series of postponements. The much-anticipated follow-up to Hole's smash-selling second LP (1994) was initially delayed in its release -- which had been planned for November of last year -- and was last scheduled to hit shelves on June 2 of this year.

"In November, we heard it would be released in February, in February we heard March, in March we heard May, in early April we heard June, and now we hear September." -- Therese Petersson, a fan

"Certainly the record is so good that we want to do whatever we can to set it up," the band's manager, Cliff Burnstein, said last week, "which might require that it be released later rather than sooner." Burnstein denied rumors that the album had been postponed due to Love's inability to tour to promote it because of her involvement in the indie film "200 Cigarettes." "They were never going to tour this summer."

The band's first album, Pretty On The Inside, was released three years prior to the highly acclaimed follow-up, Live Through This.

Given the four-year lag time, practically a career life-span for many '90s acts, the question becomes: Will fans have moved on from the melodic riot-grrrl sound of Hole's last album? Taking the example of the career-crippling, nearly five-year wait between albums courtesy of England's Stone Roses, one of the longest between-project lulls by a major pop music act, it would seem that Hole have their work cut out for them. The Stones Roses never fully recovered from the time away from the scene and eventually broke up after the release of their next album.

"Listen, Courtney Love has transcended grunge," according to Sky Daniels, general manager of music industry trade magazine Radio And Records. "The mystique of 'what will she look like, what will she do next, what will her stage persona be like?' All of that plays into her being a true personality and having a strong persona in what we can all agree has become a hit-based, sometimes faceless medium. Nothing, at this moment, literally, nothing is around that can seize the bull by the horns like she can, if she delivers a great album."

Fans, however, both new and old, say their patience is beginning to wear thin. "The delay of the new album is starting to piss me off," wrote 19-year-old Swedish fan Therese Petersson in an e-mail. Petersson, who runs the "Cry Me a River But Just Take Me Home" Hole fan site and who said she didn't discover the band until 1996, complained that the continually shifting release date has become "really frustrating."

"In November we heard it would be released in February, in February we heard March, in March we heard May, in early April we heard June, and now we hear September," wrote Petersson, who said she would have preferred it if the band's label had "kept their mouth shut" about the release date, thereby avoiding repeated fan disappointment.

Another fan, 17-year-old Ruby Rain, an Australian follower of the band who runs "The Violet Vine" Hole fan site, also wrote of her frustration, but said she thought that the album would be worth the wait. "I have heard that the album is going to be somewhat 'gothic' and is influenced by Echo and the Bunnymen, among others. That sounds pretty good!"

The band's Geffen Records publicist, Jim Merlis, confirmed that the recording for the album, produced by Michael Beinhorn (Soundgarden, Soul Asylum) is finished and that it is currently being mixed and mastered. "A release date will be set when mastering is done," Merlis said.

Because Love is a world-renowned pop figure, Burnstein said, a summer release for the album would be "difficult," especially since "from mid-June to July everything in Europe stops for the World Cup [soccer competition]. And after that a lot of Europe goes on holiday." The consensus was that Hole should not put out an album in Europe when so many other activities are going on, he added.

Song titles featured in a May Vox magazine interview with Love -- "Reasons To Be Beautiful," "Northern Star," "Boys On The Radio," "Hit So Hard" and "Awful" -- were "still good," Burnstein added, noting, however, that they could change before the album is released. Love told the magazine that the album was heavily influenced by English pop band Echo and the Bunnymen, and that the song "Reasons To Be Beautiful," co-written with Blinker the Star's Jordan Zadorozny, features a line lifted from the Neil Young tune "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)," namely "It's better to burn out than to fade away," which also featured prominently in the suicide note left by Love's late husband, Nirvana leader and grunge pioneer Kurt Cobain.

Love also told the magazine that the song "Awful" features lyrical references to Bush leader Gavin Rossdale and that "Boys On The Radio" -- a revised version of a song originally titled "Sugar Coma" that Hole performed on their April 1995 "MTV Unplugged" appearance -- is a tribute to rock songwriters "[the late] Jeff Buckley, [Lemonheads leader] Evan Dando and [ex-Beach Boys leader] Brian Wilson. It's to everyone who has ever drowned," she added cryptically. Buckley, who drowned last May in the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn., is the only one of those musicians to have actually suffered that fate.

"I'd say it's less of a punk sound than the last record," Burnstein said of the album. "It's more pop-oriented, but I also think the last one was a really pop record, though people didn't recognize it as that at the time. So we got screwed last time."

Whatever the new album sounds like, Daniels said he believes that -- outside of the Chicago-based rockers Smashing Pumpkins -- Love is one of the few rock stars of the modern era who can create pure excitement in the rock world. "Listen, she's a star in the truest, grandest sense of the word," Daniels said. "Now the question becomes: 'Can she come up with a credible musical statement?' We've seen her in movies and on the cover of Vanity Fair, now let's see if she can croak a tune or not."