London’s Sons of Martha’s music always has plenty of melody and groove, and it is usually constructed from the sum of all the moving musical parts of the band. With their latest single, “Samurai Smile,” that groove comes mainly from the muscular and melodic bass line and its perfect balance of finesse and energy that runs through the length of the song.
Drums might drive the beat hard from below, and the raw and gnarly guitars scud and scuzz about over the top, but for all those additional tones and textures, it is the bass that carries the song. It also shows us exactly how rock and roll, and indeed most popular music forms, work. The drums provide a platform, the bass builds the structure, and then everything else – those abrasive guitars, the fleeting keyboards, the smooth six-string salvo, and the vocals are all hung on that framework. And even when you can’t fully hear the notes being played, you know that it is the bass slaving away underneath everything that makes the song groove.
It may be a song based on Japanese urban myth, but the real magic happens in the sonic interplay below the lyrics. Someone famously said of another unsung four-string hero, “I don’t want to hear the bass; I want to feel it.” I should imagine that is precisely what happens when you are experiencing this song in the flesh.
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