POP MUSIC : Class of ‘94: A Hole Lotta Passion

Courtney Love, whose band Hole is one of Calendar’s choices for the year’s most promising pop arrivals, has been a presence in rock for so long that it seems hard on first thought to consider her part of a freshman class.

Yet until her major-label debut this year, Love’s fame was based largely on her notoriety--her flamboyant lifestyle, brash personality and marriage to the late Kurt Cobain. This was the year that her music kicked in, with an album and tour that were ablaze with passion.

The freshman class, open to artists who released debut albums or stepped up to major-label status during 1994, was chosen for creative vision, not sales. ( To hear selections on TimesLine, see list on Page 74. )

Here, alphabetically, are the top newcomers, with their breakthrough albums:

DAVID BALL

Typical of the wry wordplay favored by this North Carolina native on the album “Thinkin’ Problem” is the title track, a marvelous salute to--and sendup of--honky-tonk laments, using familiar drinking-song imagery to express lingering heartache: “Yes, I admit I’ve got a thinkin’ problem / She’s always on my mind / Her memory goes round and round / I’ve tried to quit a thousand times.” Ball compounds our interest by singing with all the down-home grit of the ultimate honky-tonk vocalist, George Jones.

BECK

Filled with Bob Dylan’s old disdain for authority and conventional musical boundaries, Beck--whose song “Loser” was one of the year’s defining pop-rock moments--seems as much at home with experimental hip-hop as with folk and rock on “Mellow Gold.” The young hotshot even has the nerve in “Pay No Mind” to strap on a harmonica for a walk down Highway 61, ‘90s style, describing a world in which all the toilets are overflowing, shopping malls are surrounded by manure and rock stars are the ultimate joke.

JEFF BUCKLEY

When pop fans today hear that Buckley’s father, the late Tim Buckley, was an acclaimed folk-oriented singer-songwriter in the ‘60s and ‘70s, many will assume that the elder Buckley dealt in the gentle, introspective style so popular at the time. In fact, Buckley was a fiercely independent and original artist whose music was filled with haunting, unsettling twists. In his strong-willed debut, “Grace,” son Jeff (above, second from left) also looks at the human experience--from last goodbys to desperate overtures--in ways that are haunting and profoundly personal.

DIONNE FARRIS

Don’t look for songs about love at any price or helpless devotion in the music of this former member of Arrested Development. With “Wild Seed--Wild Flower,” Farris, an accomplished and adventurous singer, gives us a work of considerable substance and style--songs that look at social problems and relationships from a positive, spiritually minded perspective. It’s topped off with arrangements that sparkle with the soul instincts of Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield.

GREEN DAY

This East Bay trio blends the loony self-parody of the Ramones with the razor-sharp insistence of the Clash (minus the politics). With lines like “I don’t know you, but I think I hate you,” the track “Chump” on the group’s major-label debut album, “Dookie,” is today’s equivalent of the Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat.” This kind of retrogression isn’t normally good in pop, but the spirit in these jabs at youthful apathy and confusion is likable and invigorating. Classic Beavis and Butt-head line: “Peel me off this Velcro seat and get me moving.”

HOLE

The eerie thing about “Live Through This,” Hole’s major-label debut album, is that the songs were written before Cobain’s suicide. The forceful tales of wounded emotions and dark-edged obsessions offer such a vivid account of psychological turmoil that it would be easy to imagine them having been written afterward. On stage, too, Hole brings the songs to life with a raw punk electricity that recalls the passion and character of such rock touchstones as Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Neil Young.

FREEDY JOHNSTON

With an album title like “This Perfect World,” you’d expect to get sappy romanticism or a songwriter who delights in irony--someone in the tradition of Elvis Costello, Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, who is capable of wicked humor and disarming poignancy. In his major-label debut, Johnston is no sap. These bittersweet tales about characters overwhelmed by life’s insults and demands carry the careful plotting and detail of finely crafted short stories.

LUSCIOUS JACKSON

This female quartet got its name from a ‘60s pro basketball star (Philadelphia ‘76er forward Lucious Jackson), its record contract from the Beastie Boys and its musical inspiration largely from hours spent visiting New York punk and rap clubs. All those influences come together nicely in the music--the group’s album “Natural Ingredients” is a refreshing celebration of urban experience that seems remarkably free of the cliches that have plagued so many other rock/hip-hop experiments.

OASIS

The punk revolution may have been ignited in London in the late ‘70s, but rock’s anger and aggression are now centered in the United States, which is one reason that British bands have such a hard time competing with the domestic hard-core. However, England’s highly melodic Oasis may break through. On “Definitely Maybe,” the band reflects many of the most enticing elements of British rock--with the swagger and sounds of everything from T. Rex and Sweet to the Sex Pistols and Stone Roses--without sacrificing its own identity.

SPEARHEAD

Michael Franti caught the rap world by surprise when he called an end to Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, the widely acclaimed duo that was saluted in Calendar’s 1992 freshman class. But Franti’s new group, Spearhead, justifies the move. Rather than repeat the somewhat strident alternative rock/hip-hop style of Disposable, Spearhead operates on more graceful soul-R&B; terrain. On “Home,” Franti’s socially conscious raps also tend to be more personal and tender.