what Love and Erlandson describe as "Sonic Youth tunings". Love's vocals range from whispers to violent screaming, often in succession with the extreme shifts in speed and volume. Drummer Caroline Rue described the band's songwriting process as collaborative and organic; she stated that she wrote her own drum parts in response to Love's guitar playing and lyrics, adding that Love never gave her direction or requested that she make changes to her drumming approach. The album contains numerous musical references to other musicians and songs, specifically in "Sassy" and "Starbelly": The guitar riff featured in "Starbelly" is based on Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" and features analog cassette excerpts from "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac and an early recording of "Best Sunday Dress" by Pagan Babies, one of Love's earlier bands with Kat Bjelland; "Sassy" includes snippets from an angry message left by Nymphs singer Inger Lorre on Love's answering machine, accompanied by a singular chord progression repeated throughout. Love has admitted that the main riff to "Mrs. Jones" was copied verbatim from "Dark Entries" by the goth rock group Bauhaus, one of her favorite bands as a teenager. In a 1991 Canadian television interview, Love commented on the album's coarse musical structure. She said that since the band was from Los Angeles, the "metal capital of the US", they thought they were making a "pop record with an edge", and were surprised by people's reactions when they were told it was violent and extreme. Love added, "It was all about the expression of my experience. I was not coming from a black void; I was trying to create light ... I was trying to heal." In an interview with Spin magazine several years after its release, Love said that she was "posing in a lot of ways" with the album: "It was the truth, but it was also me catching up with all my hip peers who'd gone all indie on me, and who made fun of me for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths. I'd done the whole punk thing, sleeping on floors in piss and beer, and waking up with the guy with the fucking mohawk and the skateboards and the speed and the whole goddamned thing. But I hated it. I'd grown out of it by the time I was seventeen." In a 1994 interview with Kurt Loder, Love admitted to having been "consciously self-conscious" when making the record