References are more decorative than distinctive on Violet Grohl’s debut album

Violet Grohl’s name already addresses the elephant in the room. Credit where credit’s due—she could’ve tried to hide her nepo status behind a stage name, although it’s not exactly an easy thing to hide when you’re thirteen years old standing in for Kurt Cobain at a Nirvana reunion show. Grohl can’t help being rock and roll royalty by birth. The twenty-year-old musician has been open about the doors her last name and industry connections have opened for her, and she’s embraced rather than abandoned or hidden her grunge bloodline, playing with the Foo Fighters and surviving members of Nirvana on multiple occasions. Judging by the sound of her debut album, Be Sweet To Me, she’s embraced it musically as well. 

The word “grunge” itself was once slang used to connote dirtiness, but the griminess of Be Sweet To Me sits in a thin layer atop a shiny surface and could easily be wiped off. Justin Raisen’s production once highlighted the grit and glamor of voices like Kim Gordon’s, Sky Ferreira’s, and Yves Tumor; with Violet Grohl, his touch comes off as decorative rust on music that’s in every way technically proficient but lacking in distinction—whether that’s in her too-cool, impassive delivery or the bad-girl word-salad lyrics it acts as a vehicle for. The come-ons (“I’ll be your 1-900 G-Spot, baby”), threats (“I’ll eat your liver”), and affirmations (“Hardcore heartbreaker, stay tough”) are all equally toothless. 

Be Sweet To Me has its bursts of energy and intrigue in the riffs that tear through “Often Others” and “Cool Buzz,” and the “party at Grandma’s” refrain in “Bug in the Cake.” But the slower and hazier songs on side two run together and supply the record with more dead weight to carry. Grohl’s whispery, ASMR vocals on “Mobile Star” are particularly tiring, and her disaffectedness sounds like an affectation. She’s cited The Breeders and PJ Harvey as major influences, but both of these artists have always made incredibly expressive and impassioned music—a quality that’s missing in Grohl’s. Instead, she performs nonchalance, offering a Gen Z facsimile of Gen X’s bored irreverence. Grohl is far from the only Zoomer artist for whom fuzz-forward Nineties alt-rock is a main reference point, but what most sets her apart from her peers is that this sound is literally in her DNA. 

At times, Be Sweet To Me feels less like a collection of songs and more like a vision board of edgy teen tropes—booze and “backseat lovers” and witchy party games like Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board all get referenced. Courtney Love might as well be pinned on it too with the way Violet Grohl apes her signature snarl. The album’s best songs (“THUM” and “Bug in the Cake”) come early, and their strengths stem from their resemblance to Celebrity Skin’s catchy hooks and buzzy guitar tones. It’s a reminder that, if you want these things, you could just listen to Celebrity Skin instead. Grohl goes full MadLibs on “Applefish” (“Black crow, fix of dawn / Kiss of death, siren song”), which does little to elevate its punishingly middle-of-the-road slowcore. It’s natural for a young artist to wear their influences like armor on the way to figuring out how to make certain sounds their own, but on Violet Grohl’s debut album, these influences are wearing her. [Auroura/Republic]

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound, and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.

Keep scrolling for more great stories.