Aud der Maur
Hole these days are probably mostly remembered for their front person - Courtney Love, but I still listen to both the Hole albums on occasion. Live Through This is good angry rock, and Celebrity Skin starts out like that for a single track, before becoming something else completely - a set of well designed and cut mellower tracks, with some really good slower tracks like Dying and probably my favourite song on the album Northern Star (Hole doing acoustic and string sections!). But alas they are no more, with the band going their seperate ways a few years ago.
I’ve still to get a hold of Ms Love’s solo album, American Sweetheart, but I did pick up the solo album by their rather less notorious bassist, Melissa Auf der Maur. This album lacks either the fidelity of the majority of Celebrity Skin or the rawness of Live Through This, but is a reasonable standing in the league of female voiced rock, reminding me more of the sound of Garbage in places than Hole. There are some classically cheesy snippets on the album (the first track springs to mind, Lightning is my Girl), but there are some tracks that have quite a good sound, Followed The Waves and Taste You (sang mostly in French) for example, that I keep listening to, which have quite a nice refreshing sound. Weirdly for a predominently rock album that errs on the side of metal, there’s one track (Would if I Could) that wouldn’t sound out of place backing a happy-go-lucky scene from the Naked Chef. Go figure. Anyway, overall good, not brilliant, but woth a listen, especially when you can currently pick it up in Fopp for three quid! Perhaps what sums this album up best is that it’s been wedged in my car CD player for the last week - it’s the kind of album that seems at home there.