BASS WOMB ROOM: My ‘90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings reveals Melissa Auf der Maur’s first new music in 15 years, out now via Envision Records. The album features demos recorded on tour and at her home in Los Angeles in the ‘90s, utilizing a Tascam four-track recorder. These are merged with various field recordings and the ambient score of her installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Melissa Auf der Maur: My ‘90s Rock Photographs. As she shared in a statement, the songs were written amidst the pressures of major-label music industry dominance and demand.
“These songs are the sound of my internal experimentation and a way of keeping the Montreal art girl alive inside,” she states. “These sounds are the quiet and private side of the girl who joined the big American major label rock band.”
Produced by Auf der Maur and Alex Crow, the ambient sounds gain a new life, a fitting accompaniment to the analog world that Auf der Maur has slowly been reviving through her art installation and its coinciding photography book, and her memoir, Even The Good Girls Will Cry, released earlier this year. All are interconnected, threaded by Auf der Maur’s wholly unique experience as a woman placed in the epicenter of 90s culture, while dually a keen observer.
The songs on BASS WOMB ROOM are not particularly cohesive; they operate more as vignettes that puzzle-piece together to form a time capsule, like fragments of Auf der Maur’s mind. We begin with “Active Heart,” as the mimic of a beating heart thumps along to the screams and roars of a crowd. It evokes a sensation of anxiety, as hums of her bass stress the tension between the two.
This is mirrored later on a track called “Billy Seoul Crowd,” aptly titled to define the audio from a Smashing Pumpkins gig, in which the titular Billy Corgan greets the audience. The sound is distorted and fuzzy, reverberating with a disastrous tone. One can’t help but imagine that this is how a live show sounds through Auf der Maur’s ears: chaotic and thrilling, but also terrifying and all-consuming.
“Courtney Chimes In,” named for Courtney Love’s addressing of a crowd, reflects a similar tone, as a slightly sinister piano melody segues into the roar of a crowd, as Love exclaims, “You guys are getting the best outta me; I have no idea why!”
This contrasting energy forms an undercurrent of BASS WOMB ROOM: Where does Auf der Maur’s mind wander when not on a massive stage, performing for thousands of watchful eyes and ears? The EP offers an explanation, through a glimpse into the musings and melodies that lingered within her amidst the pandemonium. “And The Next Day,” for instance, an acoustic ballad, rings like a diary entry with confessional lines that include, “My heart ached for you, it’s true.”
Her mind also ventures into the surreal, like on “Is She His?,” a Lynchian vision of distortion and drones that, in a shaky voice, dissects a love that exists somewhere between the tangible and the metaphysical: “I want to look at his eyes and see his soul,” she declares, “But at the same time, I’m preoccupied with the surface of his skin.” Elsewhere, “Desire is Critical” begins as a simple demo of Auf der Maur with her guitar, before haunting, echoed vocals that function as harmonies conjure the enchanting presence of a ghost.
The mundane comes alive through the snippets that feature across BASS WOMB ROOM. “In The Reflection” hears the whirr of a rewinding tape recorder squeak and echo; a dripping faucet becomes the driving force behind a jam session on “Water Wars,” enhanced with robotic synths. “Flesh Flush” layers the titular sound with droning chords, as a scream of “We love you, Melissa!” breaks through. A similar scream closes the album on “Skip a Beat” (“Melissa, can you say hi to my friend?”) as cheers fade out.
In a way, the album comes full-circle: from beginning to end, there is the presence of these screams, constant and at times, overbearing, and even in the ambient realms that Auf der Maur conceived of, they threaten to interrupt. She allows us into her mind, yes, but in doing so, we are allowed to see the spectrum of emotions that exist within it: the chaos of a live show, the quiet moments as she is recording alone, the conversations that happen with herself and others backstage and, certainly, the mayhem of a show’s aftermath. In this, BASS WOMB ROOM becomes Auf der Maur’s acute dissection of this moment in time, reflecting the pandemonium that she lived through in a way that only she can.
