Confession time: way back during the simpler times of the early ’90s, I went through an extended phase of shoegaze mania. Actually, “mania” might be understating it. Eating it, breathing it, sleeping it, living it, et al are far more accurate. I mildly cringe when I think about it now; not necessarily because of the alarming depth of my obsession, but more from the fact that I spent exorbitantly disgusting amounts of money for items like Slowdive’s early vinyl EPs to the first Pale Saints 12″ to scores of faceless, unmemorable bands that I picked up simply because a random blurb mentioned a Verve comparision in it somewhere. What’s really disheartening is that, with a few exceptions, much of it hasn’t aged well for me at all. Lush’s debut Spooky (1992) used to give me chills; now I find it pleasantly dull. I used to get worked up into a delighted frenzy over the mere thought of Chapterhouse’s Whirlpool (1991); now I turn it off halfway through. And don’t even get me started on Curve. I expected a similar reaction when I chose Texas space-rockers 7% Solution to accompany me on my drive home from work the other night. Nothing could have been more opposite; I was so enraptured that I don’t remember the journey home at all. (Perhaps I shouldn’t recall this anecdote so fondly, but I digress.)

7% Solution formed back in ‘93 in Austin by guitarist and vocalist Reese Beeman and second guitarist James Adkisson, and included drummer Scott Sasser and bassist Dwyne Moore. Their first record, titled All About Satellites and Spaceships (1996) after a series of children’s books, is a self-produced and self-released dreampop gem that incorporated a novel idea: the band had twice as many discs as they did sleeves, so they included a second extra disc in the insert to “give to a friend.” This approach is exactly how I received my copy; my good friend Trinitone was addicted to Parasol mail orders at the time, who had highly lauded the group. Lyrically, All About Satellites is a loose concept album about separation and isolation, but since the vocals are wholly buried in the mix, what really stands out is the overall sound. And what a glorious sound it is.

Any guitarist who can achieve a tasteful incorporation of the E-bow into their playing scores automatic points with me, but not only do both guitarists utilize it well, Adkisson plays through not one, but two Digitech Whammy pedals from his effects arsenal. Add to the equation the fact that his approach was more textural and less note-oriented, and the result is a thick, swirling cauldron of sound as dense as an ocean fog, with flurries of pitches pealing into the stratosphere. Adkisson’s ability to transform his Fender Strat into a sky-sawing synth is reminicent of Pat Metheny’s work in the early ’80s or the more melodic side of Robert Fripp, but with more of an emphasis on molasses-like drones, whale songs and bird calls, and replications of a string orchestra.

“Revolve” was one of the more popular and relatively “straight-forward” tracks on the disc, opening with a pinging guitar line that provides the foundation for the song, along with some noticeably fluid drumming from Sasser. Beeman contributes to the druggy, delayed soundscape by repeating each lyric once, and at 1:44 the swell of E-bowed guitars acts as a chorus, rising and falling with each bar. At 4:11 he begins a lovely finger-picked solo based around octaves that is expertly fitting in the production, then the wave crests and crashes onto the shore for the final chorus as Beeman intones hypnotically, “I miss you so.”

“Revolve” – 7% Solution 7:07 (All About Satellites and Spaceships, X-Ray 1996)

The band really lets loose on the whirlwind-like “Built on Sand,” an early album highlight and one of the noisier excursions here. Sasser’s drums are the most prominent instrument in the mix, his cymbals ricocheting off the howling wall of drones and Beeman’s drowning vocals. Suddenly the skies clear at 1:54 as the guitars gently cycle through a melody and Sasser begins a rumbling tom pattern. Anyone familiar with R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant (1986) will perk their ears upward at Beeman’s lyrics here. The climax occurs near the end as Adkisson rips sirens of glistening feedback from his guitar, the rest of the band swarming in ecstasy.

“Built on Sand” – 7% Solution 6:28 (All About Satellites and Spaceships, X-Ray 1996)

All About Satellites and Spaceships was enough to establish 7% Solution as a sizeable contributor to the American shoegaze scene, but the band released one last album before the end of the decade, 1999’s Gabriel’s Waltz. A more subdued, introspective record, Gabriel’s Waltz lacks the some of the fire and restless exploratory nature of the debut, but is a remarkable and mature statement nonetheless. Inspired by the poetry of Anne Sexton, most of the tracks are in 3/4 or 6/8 time, misleading many listeners into thinking that the group was trying to compile an album of waltzes in the traditional sense. “Carousel” is a detailed, circular instrumental that signals their broadening musicality and the advanced interplay between band members. Beeman establishes a watery guitar loop while Adkisson layers E-bow on top, and Sasser sounds like he’s in heaven with a tempo like this. Subsequent bands like Chicago’s The Timeout Drawer would take this sound and run with it wholeheartedly.

“Carousel” – 7% Solution 4:54 (Gabriel’s Waltz, X-Ray 1999)

7% Solution disbanded in 2004, with Adkisson, Beeman, and Sasser forming Sickert with Lisa Lipkin and Adkisson also playing with psychedelic instrumentalists A Five and Dime Ship. He also manages the band’s MySpace page, which includes some excellent and revealing blog entries on the group’s history, individual songs, and recording process.

“Sweet Child o’ Mine” – The Aluminum Group 4:18 (Wonder Boy Plus, Minty Fresh 1999)

Leave it to those gay ol’ Navin brothers to kidnap one of the most recognizable and popular guitar ballads of the ’80s, strip it of its sweaty bar-room masculinity, and present it as a tender, lilting reflection on innocent love. From the first notes of that instantly familiar lead (on acoustic guitar, no less), Guns n’ Roses‘ definitive anthem of sleaze-rock goes from the back seat of a flame-painted Camaro to the interior of a spiffy new Volvo, from a drunken jukebox dedication to a bedtime lullaby to a newborn baby girl. This triggers a lot of gag reflexes whenever I happen to play it for friends, but the organ during the chorus and those dreamy maj7 chords are so unexpected that it retains its freshness every time I hear it. And the trombone solos are like icing on the cake. I’d pay to see the look on Axl’s mug the first time he heard this, assuming he bothered, of course.

“California Dreamin’” – American Music Club 2:35 (San Francisco, Reprise 1994)

This hidden bonus track on American Music Club’s swan song couldn’t have been a more appropriate fit for a cover, given the album’s subject matter. Where The Mamas & the Papas injected the original with their own brand of druggy, freespirited sunniness, Eitzel’s interpretation has all the fun of a dreary, morning-after smoker’s cough. His withered voice aches its way through the chilling wail of subtle feedback that hovers behind the mix, propelled by naturally distored drums and a bass guitar that sounds like it was mic’ed from a shitty ten-dollar practice amp. Vudi wisely reproduces the guitar solo note-for-note, still one of the most finely crafted solos in pop history. “California Dreamin’” is one of those songs that should come with a warning, as it’s damn near impossible to erase this from my head once it’s stuck there.

“Welcome Christmas” – Califone 2:08 (Christmas Sampler, Perishable 2001)

Being that this is Black Friday and all (yet I’m still stationed at work in my non-retail job), I thought a classic heartwarming carol would warm the spirit and set the tone for the season. Califone’s warped take on this Dr. Seuss holiday hymn is typical of Tim Rutili’s noisy junkyard explorations of rural Americana; no surprises there. It just happens that this sounds like the spectral cries of the damned, dragging their chains as they toil in eternal servitude in the bowels of Hades. But wait - is that a little girl’s voice singing along? What the hell is going on here?!? Fortunately, the track’s brevity prevents it from permanently haunting my subconscious.

“Lay Lady Lay” – Ministry 5:44 (Filth Pig, Warner Bros. 1996)

As lambasting as the initial reviews of Ministry’s Filth Pig (1996) were, the most scathing attacks focused on the band’s ill-advised choice of including this cover near the end of the record. Though I respect his work as a songwriter, I couldn’t give a rat’s carcass about Dylan’s music, which perhaps explains why I didn’t view this cover as a defiant sacrilegious piss on his legacy when it was released over ten years ago. Paul Barker’s bottom-feeding, gutteral bass tone practically makes the song, despite Al Jourgensen’s utter lack of vocal enthusiasm, quizzically adopting an odd British inflection at times. Though it wears out its welcome around the fourth minute or so, this isn’t really as vehemently objectionable as the naysayers made it out to be.

“Come As You Are” – Dani Siciliano 5:11 (Likes…, K7 2004)

Dani Siciliano had some brass to present the nth cover “Come As You Are” on her debut; what could she possibly add to this Nirvana classic that hadn’t already been done before? Well, for starters, other than the lyrics, it’s a completely different song. I would be so bold as to presume that it actually was an original track that was waiting for vocals, and Siciliano just happened to like the way Cobain’s verses complemented her arrangements. Sonically, this is a treasure trove for the ears: a springy upright bass dominates the proceedings, presiding over an army of insect-farm percussion, moody film noir horns, and Siciliano’s smoky nightclub voice.

As gloriously timeless as the music itself is, what I admire most about Marvin Gaye’s ’70s catalogue is the crystalline distinctiveness of each release, rendering internal comparisons within his discography pointless. There is the universally-heralded, genre-defining breakthrough What’s Going On (1971), the obligatory Blaxploitation soundtrack Trouble Man (1972), a passionate and charged plea for divine love in Let’s Get It On (1973), the divorce court-ordered soap opera Here, My Dear (1978), and two outstanding live records where the shrieks of the hysterical female audience members often drowned out every other sound in the mix.

I Want You (1976), Gaye’s collaboration with Motown songwriter Leon Ware, went overlooked for years until experiencing a renaissance of sorts in the early ’90s with the emergence of the “neo-soul” movement. Although it’s far from Marvin’s most personal statement, it was an incredibly important record to him at the time, to the point where he was still fine-tuning his vocals just days before the masters were due to Motown. Despite what the liners would have you believe, I Want You was not well-received by the critics upon its release in March of ‘76, calling it “slush for disco dancers,” with Marvin guilty of a “constant, rather jaded horniness.” The fans thought otherwise, as the album went on to go platinum. In retrospect, and from a strictly sonic perspective, where Let’s Get It On teased with seduction and foreplay, I Want You served as the the actual act of intercourse.

While the successful title track is perhaps the most well-known single here and serves as the theme of the album, it is “Come Live with Me Angel” that is truly the centerpiece of I Want You, and was actually originally planned as the recurring motif instead. At six and a half minutes, it’s certainly the longest selection and occupied a generous portion of side one on the original LP. It’s the ideal culmination, musically and lyrically, of the array of ingredients that make I Want You such an original statement: the rich, disco-lite orchestration and the softly pulsating grooves contained within, paired with Marvin’s near-explicit lyrics (for the time) and thematic content all made for an irresistible slice of Soul heaven.

The track begins with an odd seven-note drum fill from James Gadson before diving right into the full scope of the production; the percussion buildups and slowly escalating strings (á la Barry White) have been discarded in favor of immediate sensuality. Gentle horns state the theme over a feathery bed of woodwinds, strings, and a synthesizer, while the rhythm section, supplemented by bongos, saunters tightly and confidently. Marvin enters shortly after, complemented by a lovely contrapuntal figure for the violins. As the first verse begins at 0:24, the ingenious arrangements by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson blossom into evidence. In a mere two bars, the following can be heard:

• A chilly descending arpeggio on a Rhodes in the left channel;
• Two electric guitars: one coolly outlining the harmony (right) while the other gyrates sleazily under the influence of a wah pedal (left);
• A faint taste of the horns providing dashes of color under the guitars;
• An exotic, loose bongo pattern dripping into the rhythm;
• Chuck Rainey’s magnificent open bassline, allowing ample room for the above;
• And an elegant four-note ascending line for pizzicato strings that overlaps into the next bar.

As Marvin’s multi-tracked vocals begin the verse, the attentive listener will immediately recognize a curious new inflection in his delivery. Compared to the direct, emotionally charged declarations for love and compassion on What’s Going On and Let’s Get It On, Marvin’s voice sounds subdued, casually intimate, almost mumbling in the mix. It’s as if he’s softly cooing in his lover’s ear while lying in bed, illuminated by moonlight as he nurses a joint. (Given his penchant for tracking his vocals while sprawled out on the couch in the control room of the studio, the above scenario probably isn’t far off the mark.) Over a vamp of “I wanna be your lover,” Marvin croons the following lines:

I don’t understand your mood, baby
I really, really wanna be your lover
When you want some solitude, sugar
You can’t have it, ooh yeah, baby.
Darling, please walk around me (at least) three times a day
So I can get ‘cha, baby.
I want to be true at least three times a day, in all the ways, baby.
You can have your way if you decide to stay.

When presented with the lyric sheet, Marvin’s intentions become a little less wide-eyed and innocent, bordering on conniving and mildly threatening, albeit in a somewhat playful way. Essentially, he is explaining to his woman the rules of the household: as long as he receives sex three times a day, in “all the ways,” she is free to come and go however she pleases. He has little patience for her moods, simply wanting nothing more than for her to display herself to him, toying and teasing with him to turn him on. Note how the verse is 18 bars instead of the standard 16 to accommodate the last line, summarizing the conditions of staying with him. Marvin becomes more descriptive of his bedroom stamina in the second verse at 1:42:

Ooh, this is where all your fantasies end.
Let me explore all your treasures
I’ll turn you on to all of those freakish pleasures.
Good experienced company, like me,
Who knows all the ways, is what you need, baby.
Just you and me, locked up for days.
After we eat breakfast in bed, turn on the music for our heads.

This is Marvin’s argument to get his woman to remain in his home, offering to fulfill all her fantasies and enticing her with “freakish pleasures.” He tells her that only an experienced lover such as himself could satisfy her, and daydreams about the morning after as they eat breakfast in bed and listen to music. After the second chorus, which is repeated twice (note Gadson’s hi-hat accents at 2:46), the real payoff begins at 3:24: the heavenly sublime vamp that escorts the song back to the bedroom for the finale.

Musically, this is where the song elevates from the terrestrial into the stratosphere; never have I heard a coda as beautifully paced and elegantly arranged as this. Gadson alternates over to the ride cymbal as he and the Latin percussion begin to vibe off each other in a loose, improvisatory manner. Chuck Findley begins a fiery trumpet solo that contrasts nicely with Marvin’s icy “ooohs” reverberating in the distance. Rainey’s decision to play an ascending bassline under the chromatically descending progression is a stroke of genius. Gwanda Hambrick’s faint gasps and sighs help steer the song toward climax. Unable to contain his feverish arousal, Marvin’s breath quickens and he begins chanting “sock it to me” (cluelessly misinterpreted by some critics as “suck dick,” evidently unfamiliar with ’70s vernacular). This outro, subsisting on only four chords yet contributing to nearly half of the track’s running time, signals the transition from Marvin’s conscious requests for lovemaking to a surreal, dreamlike state of intense sexual pleasure. His desires have finally been answered as his lover submits to him.

“Come Live with Me Angel” – Marvin Gaye 6:30 (I Want You, Motown 1976)

A revealing alternate mix of the song is found on Motown’s Deluxe Edition, which includes an omitted bridge and a much longer trumpet solo from Findley.

“Come Live with Me Angel (Extended Mix)” – Marvin Gaye 7:37 (I Want You: Deluxe Edition, Motown 2003)

There are two qualities of the human experience which are inarguably subjective: humor and eroticism. With that in mind, dear reader, it is futile for me to tell you that this is unquestionably the sexiest, most erotic song in the history of recorded music; and yes, I am very familiar with the catalogues of Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, and the aforementioned bedroom master Mr. White. Judge for yourself, but only as the music is intended to be heard: late in the evening with the lights dimmed low and your lover close by.

A few weeks ago, while casually perusing the Hefty Records site for any worthwhile new releases, I began to take notice of the track that had been cued as I entered the site. Perhaps “take notice” is understating it; it was more like I had slowly drifted into a blissful trance as my screen blurred, slipping out of my surroundings as I entered a womb-like state of warm comfort. The song playing was “A Ballet of Hands” by a duo calling themselves Solo Andata, and I was able to interrupt my reverie long enough to place an order for their debut, titled Fyris Swan (2006). Based on my initial reactions and growing acquaintance with the album, it will likely make my Top Ten list for the year.

Paul Fiacco and Kane Ikin first met at a show in Perth, Australia, five years ago and began a musical collaboration shortly afterward. Paul moved to Stockholm, Sweden last year while Kane stayed in Perth, but the two continued to exchange ideas and build their compositions via the virtues of modern technology. Fyris Swan is the result, a breathtaking jewel of an album that condenses its scattered influences into its own unique, well-defined sound. It is a record that warrants a paced, detailed exploration of its ten tracks, each developing delicately and naturally, only revealing their intricacies as they conclude. As the songs unfold, crystalline images appear of the dry, baking summers of Western Australia or the frigid twilight of Scandinavia, reflecting the contrast in environments during the compositional process. Most of the pieces are guided along by a continually-shifting web of acoustic guitar or piano, with everything from wind chimes, saxophone, found sound recordings, and hints of percussion intertwined throughout the mix.

Paul is currently living in London while Kane is preparing for a move to Melbourne. Both were gracious enough for a chat recently, and were probably unaware of my envy when I discovered that Paul had witnessed a Matthew Herbert performance the night before.

FWM: Paul, how was the Herbert show last night? I’ve been dying to see him for years, but I’ve heard mixed reactions from this tour.

Paul: Wow. I was left speechless. I’m a big Herbert fan and I love all of his stuff. Last night was the first time I had seen him live. He was so funny on stage, coming out with his gold and red dressing gown without any shoes, moving haphazardly to his beeps and snippets of sax and trumpet, and jerking his whole body left and right to some beautiful vocals and genius composition. It was a real performance. Adding to it was its venue, the KOKO club in London, which has four to five levels with about six bars and a mirror ball the size of a truck if it was bent over.

FWM: How long have the two of you been playing music together, transglobally or otherwise?

Paul: We’ve been messing around with music for roughly three to four years now. We met in 2002 and after experimenting for a few years, finally found something that we’re happy with. We began writing transglobally in 2005, but have had about six months since then that we’ve been in the same room. Yet Fyris Swan was done completely over the wires.

FWM: Based on the bio on your site, I get the impression that Scott Herron’s work was a significant influence on the music. Were there any other influences while creating the album?

Paul: Savath & Savalas came rather late in my musical adventures. I listened to it a bunch but wasn’t directly influenced by it. At the time of Fyris Swan, Herron was deeply respected and I had all of his work on my record shelf as more of an archetypal father figure. While creating the record I was listening to Tom Waits, Oren Ambarchi, Ernst Reijseger, and jazz like Bill Evans.

Kane: My biggest influence at the time of Fyris Swan was what Paul and I were sending each other over the wires. I can’t name anything specifically that I was getting inspiration from; it was kind of like a feedback loop from bouncing ideas back and forth. Prior to the record I was all into Radiohead, Mogwai, and stuff like that, but post-Fyris Swan, Paul opened my eyes to a lot of great music in our style that I now love, like F.S. Blumm, Hauschka, Bear in Heaven, and Tape.

FWM: How did you hook up with John (Hughes III) at Hefty? Did Victor Bermon have anything to do with it?

Kane: Basically, we were writing a bunch of tracks while I was in Perth and Paul was in Stockholm, and one day Paul sent me an email saying, “I’ve compiled and sent a CD of our tracks to a bunch of labels.”

Paul: A month later, when I was in Sicily with Victor Bermon, Kane and I get an email from Hefty! Victor had already been signed to Hefty earlier, which was amazing news for all of us (we come from the same small city), but I think the chief incentive was that Savath & Savalas’ Rolls and Waves EP (2002) was on Hefty.

FWM: Speaking of the writing process, does one of you come up with an initial idea while the other fleshes it out? How do you both know when a track is finished?

Paul: The writing process begins when either Kane or I send each other a sound, loop, or recording of a guitar, a fish jumping, a violin crying, or whatever. If I were to send Kane a loop, he would then add something he “feels,” then send it back, then I would add, and then he chops, and so on. I usually have an aesthetic feeling telling me if it’s finished yet or not.

Kane: It’s kind of like your arts and crafts class in primary or kindergarten school where you make collages, just cutting stuff up with plastic scissors and gluing it onto big pieces of paper. You’re too young to understand, but you’re just feeling it and it’s finished when it’s nap time or you run out of glue, paper, or the bell rings.

“A Ballet of Hands” – Solo Andata 5:57 (Fyris Swan, Hefty 2006)

FWM: That’s interesting, because my favorite aspect of the record is the organic quality of each track; they develop so naturally that it’s difficult to imagine a “conscious” process involved. Do you agree with the comparisons to free jazz, or as the Hefty site put it, “Alice Coltrane without the harp”?

Paul: You could say at times that factors outside the music, without a mind behind it, helped evolve some of Fyris Swan’s sound. And yeah, we agree with the free jazz stuff in retrospect, because we weren’t – or at least I wasn’t – aiming for a “jazz” thing at the time, but I think we just wanted less emphasis on a fixed tempo and structure, being freer. Some of the sax lines on the Alice Coltrane records are perhaps Hefty’s reason for comparing it to Solo Andata.

FWM: I read somewhere online that Fyris Swan is great “sleep” music, which I just can’t fathom. There are so many fascinating ideas nestled in each track that I would want to stay awake and listen to them all. Did both of you play all the instruments heard on the record? Who played the sax parts?

Kane: We never understood how this music could be for sleeping. That’s just how it is with “ambient” music I suppose, especially for people with a different mindset. For instruments, it was all over the place. But generally, Paul would play the piano, accordion and some guitar, and I would mostly play guitar and anything that we both could get our hands on, even if we were really bad at them. The stuff we played and sampled just turned into a huge sample library of a “forgotten-who-played-what” folder. When we listen to it now we can never remember who played what.

Paul: I was staging a Samuel Beckett play at my university and one of the actors was a beautiful sax player, so I bought him a six-pack of beer to come over and jam with Solo Andata, but at that time the name “Solo Andata” was non-existent.

”Coastal Road Thoughts” – Solo Andata 6:54 (Fyris Swan, Hefty 2006)

FWM: Do you have any plans to play the material live? How would you translate the music to the stage?

Kane: Paul is playing live in London on the 22nd of November at the Luminaire. But ultimately, together we would like to at least try and recreate Fyris Swan on stage by having a bunch of instruments and sampling them, accompanied by a double bass player and a trumpet or sax player. It could be either catastrophic or rather interesting.

FWM: You guys certainly have a place to crash in New England if you ever make it over to the States. Thanks for taking the time to chat and congratulations on the new record.

The following is a list of my top five favorite rock (”electric”) bassists, along with their band and the era of their best work. On a quick personal note, I’ve been a bass player for nearly fifteen years now, so I’m ridiculously picky about my bassists, and compiling this list took much longer than expected.

5. Eric Claridge, The Sea and Cake (1994-present)

Eric who? The old adage of not judging a book by its cover applies tenfold to The Sea and Cake bassist Eric Claridge, who looks like he just finished hazing some freshmen in the frathouse basement. In addition to his artwork, Claridge provides the bottom end to this Chicago supergroup of sorts (who are long overdue for a new release), previously holding it down for the sorely neglected Shrimp Boat. I have yet to meet someone who recognizes the talents of this man as much as I do.

Bass players in general are a defensive and irascible bunch: their contributions are acknowledged the least, they’re usually the last guys in the band to get laid, and are the quickest to forcefully argue their importance in the group. Many players remedy these injustices by overcompensating, playing more notes than necessary and snatching up the first opportunity to showcase their talents. Based solely on his playing, Claridge wholly embodies the antithesis of this temperament. Employing a full, round tone that could settle the harshest stomach, Claridge seems to pore over every bassline as if the fate of the world depended on it. The icing on the cake? He never, ever overplays. He is a champion of minimalism on the instrument, emphasizing each space between the notes. As much as I love the way the individual styles mesh together in this band, Eric Claridge, for me, is by far the most fascinating element of their sound.

The haunting and serene “Seemingly,” arriving toward the tail end of Oui (2000), is a marvelous example of Claridge’s restraint. Opening with a singing, lyrical bassline resembling a secondary vocal melody, he begins to dig into the tune at 1:16, locking into John McEntire’s lazy drum pattern. Note how his 12 against 4 polyrhythm livens up the track at 2:06, and at 2:56 he reaches up the neck to begin a soulful line that flows underneath the atmospheric pads beautifully, closing out the song. Simplicity at its finest.

4. Simon Johns, Stereolab (1997-present)

When Duncan Brown left Stereolab after 1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, I was a bit unsure if The Groop could find a suitable replacement that would augment their unique sound the way he was able to. Simon Johns most certainly did not disappoint on Dots and Loops (1997), his official release as a full-time member. Since then, Johns has navigated through elaborate jazz chord progressions, baffling time signatures, and the band’s trademark bubbly grooves with fluidity and ease. Along with mainstay timekeeper Andy Ramsay, he also developed the rhythm section into one of the most distinctive in modern music: by plucking each note with a heavy pick while muting the strings with the underside of his palm, Johns gets a thick, chunky sound out of his bass that’s irresistably enthralling and funky as hell to boot. His lines can be incredibly difficult to play, but they never feel labored or crowded with ideas. It’s impossible to imagine the band now without his input.

“Vonal Declosion,” from Margerine Eclipse (2004), is Stereolab’s finest album kickoff since “Metronomic Underground,” chiefly because of Johns’ insistently propulsive bass lead. When the chorus arrives at 0:28, he resists the urge to alter the groove and simply moves the pattern to the root of each chord, giving the already busy production a more rigid sense of uniformity; it’s deceptively effective. The only occasion for variation is at the start of the bridge at 1:30, where Johns advances the rhythm in simple three-note increments, allowing plenty of room for the skittering dual-mono drums and Lætitia Sadier’s vocals. There are plenty of ‘Lab songs that display a wider range of his capabilities on the instrument, but few capture the essence of his “sound” better than this track.

“Vonal Declosion” – Stereolab 3:33 (Margerine Eclipse, Elektra 2004)

3. Colin Moulding, XTC (1979-1992)

Known in the early days of the group as “the cute one,” Colin Moulding’s day as the most underrated bassist of his generation will likely go unnoticed, but not before I shout his praises from every avenue available. XTC’s quirky and abstract approach to constructing pop songs would have lost half of its impact and appeal were it not for Moulding’s brilliantly inventive bass playing. Regarless of what Andy Partridge obsessives might say, he was the chief ingredient in their sound, whether he was imitating the nonsensical lyrics with his bassline (”Helicopter”), sculpting the song into a dense, hypnotic groove (”Jason and the Argonauts”), or replicating the analog-compressed thump of late-’60s psychedelia (”Bike Ride to the Moon”). Instead of taking a back seat to Partridge and Dave Gregory’s scurrying guitar leads and arpeggios, Moulding joined right in on the fun, stretching and forming his basslines with a seemingly whimisical carelessness, yet somehow remained locked in with Terry Chambers‘ drumming perfectly. He principally played with a pick before making the gradual transition to his fingertips in the mid-’80s, eventually achieving some of the most deliciously fluid basslines in pop music on Oranges & Lemons (1989).

“Roads Girdle the Globe” is one of the most bizarre songs in the band’s oeuvre. Under a batch of dissonant guitar chords, Moulding starts the track with a croaking, bouncing bassline that should be grossly inappropriate, but it somehow works. Listen to the way he guides the way through those sticky guitar clusters beginning at 0:17, countering their fretwork with complex figures of his own and repeatedly jumping down the neck as the progression descends, prompting the question: How in hell would he think to do that? Moulding continues to spring around each bar during the verses, and 2:29 he settles on a playful line that nestles cozily under the guitars. This is easily one of the most creative applications of bass guitar that I’ve ever heard in a song.

“Roads Girdle the Globe” – XTC 4:51 (Drums and Wires, Virgin 1979)

2. Andy Rourke, The Smiths (1984-1987)

Don’t let the quiff fool you. Andy Rourke had more far more funk flowing through his fingers than any other pasty white boy from Manchester before or since. Often outshined by Johnny Marr’s songwriting genius and Morrissey’s overall notoriety (for lack of a better word), I would venture to guess that less than five percent of all conversations about The Smiths involve Rourke’s contributions. This is absolutely, obscenely unacceptable. It’s shameful enough that he was alloted a measly fraction of the band’s royalties for years, considering that his bass playing was often the most engaging part of the song; not to slight Morrissey and Marr, but “Barbarism Begins at Home,” to cite an example, wouldn’t come close to resembling the masterpiece it is without Rourke’s blessing.

My favorite description of the way Rourke approached his bass duites is that he used to write “a song within the song” on his instrument, meaning if you stripped the track of everything but the bass, virtually an entire different tune would appear. This was the crux of his brilliance, as he explicitly understood his role as the proverbial “glue that held the rest together,” albeit an incredibly viscous and highly flexible one. Rourke had a casual, one-take method to his basslines that sharply contrasted Marr’s overdubbed perfectionism. In addition, the dichotomy between Marr’s elegant, shimmering arpeggios and Rourke’s trebly and gutteral bass tone was a delicate balance in The Smiths’ sound, but the two somehow made it work. Rourke and the guitarist were members of a local funk group before the formation of the band, and despite Morrissey’s subversive attempts to “class up” their material near the end of their career, he still retained that aggressive, groove-oriented edge.

Most folks have probably never paid attention to what Rourke is doing on the group’s classic “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” Ignore, for a moment, Morrissey’s miserable crooning, Marr’s rich, light-fingered chording, and Mike Joyce’s rock-solid drum pattern. Rourke really is playing another song underneath the arrangements - this gets me so animated that I’m going to have to break out the notation. In four bars and merely six chords of the first verse (0:16) he plays something like this:

Rourke loved to lace up his bass tracks with colorful little fills such as the ones above, and had no qualms about playing each subsequent section with slight variations; whether he was high, absent-minded about his own playing, or just plain didn’t care at the time is of little value. At 0:42 he begins blending in a sequence of thick chords to lead into a four-bar exposition by Marr, and as the intro returns at 1:32, plucks out the brief, jazzy solo he opened the song with. At its essence, “Heaven Knows” really only consists of two sections, yet Rourke makes it sound like a dozen.

“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” – The Smiths 3:35 (Louder Than Bombs, Sire 1987)

1. Mike Mills, R.E.M. (1982-1996)

What the hell, I’ll come right out and state it: without Mike Mills, R.E.M. would have barely merited a footnote in the history of pop music, provided they had lasted long enough. Stipe would have imploded into his own introverted, cryptic musings, Peter Buck would have been slobbering drunk in a corner of the rehearsal space, wondering who would play his solo for him, and Bill Berry would have been sitting at his kit, trimming his unibrow, and dreaming about the idylls of farm life. That’s unjustifyably simplistic, I’ll admit, but the point is made: from a purely musical perspective, Mills was R.E.M. Debate it if you must, but keep in mind that in the early days of the group, Buck barely knew his way around a guitar (the beauty of multi-tracking cloaked his inexperience), Stipe offered little, if any, musical guidance, and the timid Berry mostly kept his mouth shut.

I’d be lying if my reasons for selecting Mills as the finest bassist of the last twenty-plus years weren’t somewhat sentimental. The promotional sticker affixed to the cover of Eponymous (1988) was completely accurate in my case: R.E.M. was the group I grew up with, and I distinctly remember one day, as a ten-year-old, suddenly noticing what Mike Mills (”the geeky one”) was playing. My young aspirations of a guitar god vanished instantly, substituted with the noble solitude of the rock bassist. Mills is the ultimate definition of “a bassist’s bassist,” and no one (possibly Adam Clayton) plays at the same level of dignity and composure as him. His tunefulness and sense of melody are so strong that one moment you’ll be thinking that you’re humming an R.E.M. tune, only to realize later that it was his buried bassline stuck in your head.

Truthfully, I could have picked almost any song from the era above to demonstrate the caliber of Mike Mills’ bass playing, but “Maps and Legends,” from 1985’s Fables of the Reconstruction does the job nicely. His three-note pickup is the first series of notes to appear, and his warm, slightly picked tone sounds magical under Buck’s ringing chords. The way Mills anticipates and connects each chord during the verses is truly exquisite in its simplicity. In all likelihood, he wrote his bass part in a matter of minutes, such was his inherent musicality; perhaps he spent more time arranging the song or playing the organ for more texture, a subtle touch that can be heard briefly at the very end. Mills’ early work allows me to forgive him for those asinine mod outfits he donned on stage during the mid-90’s, his full participation in “At My Most Beautiful,” his recent reliance on painfully outdated keyboard sounds, or a number of offenses that I’ve struggled to comprehend. You see, I need Mike Mills’ bass playing to make me forget the past ten years of R.E.M.’s career. It’s that good, and it’s just easier that way.