The name Melissa Auf der Maur should ring a bell to all of you. She’s the former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bass player. After the latter band decided to call it a day, Melissa had turned her back on the music business for a while. This year however, she’s back with here first solo album. 2004 might just be her year since “Auf der Maur” is definitely one of the better releases of the last couple of months.

The songs on the album have been written over the last ten years. Usualy this leads to a strange mix of songs; the out-dated tracks stand in strong contrast with the fresh sounding tracks that were written most recently. “Auf der Maur” is an exception, all tracks sound very fresh and are well developed.

It’s no surprize that all tracks have excellent rhythm’s since most of them are based on bass and drum foundations.

These strong structures give the additional musicians amoung whom Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Eric Erlandson (Hole) and James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) the room to do their thing. The different approach of these musicians make “Auf der Maur” an exciting and varying album. Favorites are “Followed the Waves” with it’s psychedelic approach, the powerfull “Beast of Honor” and “Would If I Could” which has great melodies and therefore has hit potential.

The only weak points I could think of are the somewhat simple lyrics, the track “Overpower Thee” and the artwork of the CD.