Auf Der Maur

Melissa Auf der Maur is the Montreal bassist who made her name holding down the low end in Hole. She'd started out in 1993 with an indie rock band called Tinker while studying at Concordia University, and in the summer of 1994 Hole drafted her; she's there on several of their records, Celebrity Skin among them. After leaving in 1999 she did a stint as a touring member of the Smashing Pumpkins in 2000 and started building a solo career.

Her self-titled debut came out on Capitol in 2004, and it's a heavy, heady thing: big slabs of fuzz bass and stoner-rock riffing, with her voice floating cool and clear over the churn. "Followed the Waves" is the pick, a slow tide of distortion that rolls in and won't roll out. Out of Our Minds followed in 2010 on her own label, part of a sprawling project that also took in a film and a comic book, made with her husband, the filmmaker Tony Stone. Along the way she's worked with Indochine, Rufus Wainwright and Ric Ocasek, and she has a second life as a photographer and occasional actress.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.