Hole, 'Honey' (Sessions)

AOL: Hole performed their first big US comeback show in Austin during SXSW, as part of the Spin party. How did it feel to be back on home soil and onstage?

LOVE: Well, it was good ... more than in Europe where I didn't engage the audience at all. In my home country, I'm a lot more at ease or something. I don't know. That show was just, like, fun and stupid and swagger-y, really. It was cut short. I wanted to give the full, you know, sort of Springsteen three hour [grunts], and then I was told that I'd get the power cut. I was about to make a scene.

AOL: A lot of critics praised the performance, though. How important is it for you this time around, if at all, to have that critical praise?

LOVE: Well, I don't really read reviews. I read, like, David Fricke [of Rolling Stone], I read Robert Hilburn [of the Los Angeles Times]. I read [Jon] Pareles [of the New York Times]. Pareles gave me a pretty good review, actually, which he's never given me a bad review. He wrote something on the case against Coldplay. So vicious. But [his Hole review] was like, "Swagger. Incorrigible. A star." And that was his Twitter. I was having this huge identity crisis and the reason I know about the case against Coldplay is because I'm friends with Chris Martin and Gwyneth [Paltrow], and [Gwyneth] told me about it. I would never use someone else's misery to make myself feel better, but I was having an identity crisis, so this is how important it is: At three in the morning, I pulled up the 'Case Against Coldplay,' read it aloud to my friend and then I read my review next to it. I felt better! Which is a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to say. The New York Times matters. Otherwise, the rest of them, I don't give a s---.