Smashing Pumpkins - ADORE (1998) - their last masterpiece - the poll

i absolutely LOVED "eye" when it came out, i was totally looking forward to the next album being all depeche modey

I have a theory that TEITBITE was the BOTE for SM commercially because billy looked so silly in the video clip.

But yeah I remember being vaguely disappointed there wasn’t more stuff like “Eye” on the album.

“ava adore” is such a weird song. so moody and glitchy and then there’s a double-tracked guitar solo that sounds imported from a cheap trick song

i first saw the "ava adore" video on trl when it wasn't live and was just called total request and it was just carson daily counting down videos on a couch in a dark studio iirc. think it came on before "as long as you love me." i was completely obsessed with mellon collie and i thought "ava adore" was potentially the best song i'd ever heard, so i immediately bought the record and found it extremely confusing. for months i only listened to the songs that coded as "heavy" (so... just "ava" and "tear"), though i would compulsively read the lyrics to the other songs and make up my own vocal melodies to them (??? literally have no idea why i did this). one night, when i was bored with whatever record i was listening to at the time (eve 6?) i put adore on and listened to it the whole way through and had such a powerful experience that it immediately became my favorite album of all time. i still get that feeling a little every time i listen to it

there are several weird cool digressions on this record, like the muffled piano bridge on "tear" or the "all you have to do is run away" part of "behold! the night mare" (that title is classic btw); the songwriting just feels very open in a way that carried over somewhat to machina and then the dude never really wrote that way again

i'm at the point where i think "perfect" was def the best sp single and is maybe the best sp song

ha brad I specifically cited that part as the justification for my B!tNM vote

also I'm finally listening to the b-sides/outtakes and boy this really is the album where Billy and co. just completely nailed the track selection and sequence

otm

i mean i love the b-sides for this record but i'm glad they're all not on the record (except maybe "blissed and gone" and "waiting")

of what made it on, it's absolutely *not* an intuitive set of songs to sequence, either. you could make a case for seven or eight possible openers!

"to sheila" was an inspired choice as an opener i think; it sets a muted, intimate, dreamy tone (even as "ava adore" comes crashing in after it) that the rest of the album lengthens and sustains

even when the album tries to get hard and edgy (verses of "pug") it inevitably slips into something more blurred and glowing (chorus of "pug")

the arising ‘99 version of Pug rules

The album premiered on a radio station here, two weeks or so before the actual release. I taped it obv. But for some reason, they aired it with the songs shuffled, not the album order. Bear in mind, it was two weeks before the physical release, so I played that tape to death. What they did was play Annie Dog which seamlessly went into Appels + Oranjes... I thought it was one song! And because I played that tape approx 1 million times those weeks, I cannot ever uncouple the two. Even made an mp3 pasting them together lol. It really works though!

lol did they play it in alphabetical order

ah yes, the famous "adeor" edit

Whoa you just blew my mind :D

Seriously though, when Corgan ends Annie Dog with 'fa-ace...' and then that A+O intro comes in... You had to be there prob but it works.

xp lol

lol @ simon

i'm sure it's been brought up already, but this album is really too damn long for one disc. i'm very much in favor of bands releasing long albums on two CDs even if they can fit on a single disc.. like the unwound double album...

"behold! the night mare" (that title is classic btw)

Brad gets it.

behold! the night mare is my favourite

the album is definitely too long but i'm not really sure what i'd cut except for annie-dog

Adore is overlong and shaggy in a way that reinforces its sense of loss and the feeling of actually being lost, and wandering in the dark. To Sheila is such a clear-eyed, relaxed, and optimistic opener, and from there it goes in a dozen different directions, and it ends all so unresolved with Blank Page.

D'arcy whining on the documentary about still being in the studio after ten months when the plan was to record the album in 6 weeks (4 days a week, 6 hour days) = classic.

and the recording process for MCIS had to have been even longer lol

actually the MCIS sessions only lasted ~6 months, early March to late August '95. the record was finished by the time they played Reading that year. pretty remarkable considering those sessions yielded the majority of TAFH as well.

but they were super concentrated & focused in 1995; Adore was much more of a session here, session there type of record, and one that started off as a Billy Corgan solo album (according to Brad Wood, who recorded To Sheila, Blank Page, Ava Adore, Tear, Daphne Descends, and Behold! the Night Mare). The 666 Tapes show the band at their best, one of my favorite performances of Porcelina is 27 minutes in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U7QGPz4xmA

I wonder how well rehearsed they were going in, and hoe much pre-production there was, though? I have a feeling some were rehearsed up prior to going in with others being worked out in the studio and others only featuring Billy (like 'Stumbleine') or Billy/Jimmy only. It's a lot of material!

*how

yeah of the 56 on MCIS & TAFH it breaks down like this:

written for Siamese Dream
Set the Ray to Jerry
Meladori Magpie

written during the Siamese Dream tour ( Gravity Demos )
Tonight, Tonight
Jellybelly
Zero
Here is No Why
To Forgive
Love
Galapagos
Mouths of Babes
Marquis in Spades
The Aeroplane Flies High
Pennies
Ugly

written fall '94 - early '95
pretty much everything else

written during the recording of MCIS
Where Boys Fear to Tread
Bodies
In the Arms of Sleep
1979
Thru the Eyes of Ruby
X.Y.U.
We Only Come Out at Night

Lots of stuff is just Billy at home: Stumbleine, Meladori Magpie, Rotten Apples, Blank... then they recorded the covers for TAFH right before Jimmy OD'd, and iirc they did a few more like Medellia and The Last Song that summer. But yeah most of those 56 songs were written and recorded in a very short period of time, pretty insane. there was a lot of pre-production and rehearsal in the fall of '94, and you can get a good sense of where they were at with the four Double Door shows in February '95, days before they went into the studio. Songs like Muzzle, Fuck You, Porcelina, Thirty-three, Zero, and on and on and on, were all fully formed by then.

a previously uncirculated gem was uploaded today. 2 hour adore-era show, ridiculous setlist & performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yvk7X4wmhE

To Sheila
Behold! the Night Mare
Pug
Tear
Once Upon a Time
Crestfallen
Ava Adore
Appels + Oranjes
Daphne Descends
Annie-Dog
Perfect
Tonight, Tonight
The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Shame
For Martha
---
1979
Blank Page

Apathy Video continues to be a youtube hero. This just went up 15 minutes ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHDtCRHFsn4

aw 11:22

the interviewer does some annoying bits in the beginning but his description of Adore as "a wolf in lamb's clothing" is otfm

MTV: Think about those early days in the little rehearsal space. It all came true, didn't it?

BILLY: ...Yeah.

JAMES: I never thought about that.

D'ARCY: Never thought about what?

JAMES: I don't know, whatever he's saying there.

D'ARCY: You don't even know what he's saying!

MTV: Way back then in your little rehearsal space in Chicago, with Stumpy the three-legged cat, Billy was what we call "larging it," saying that "The Smashing Pumpkins are going to be one of the greatest bands on the face of the earth." Cast your mind back then, were you thinking, "Yeah, he's right," or were you like "Right, call an ambulance"?

D'ARCY: That image at that moment, he doesn't even remember that. That's just like etched in my mind, and I'm like "Well, yeah." I just thought of course, or I wouldn't be putting up with any of this bullshit. I wouldn't be putting myself through this hell if I didn't think that something was going to come of it. It was really hard. It was very hard. Stumpy... he was the best part about it.

I love d'arcy so fucking much lol

I do too but Melissa Auf Der Mar is one of the sexiest bass players ever so she is not my favorite bass player in the Smashing Pumpkins.

i too like to rate bass players by their relative sexiness, a good and normal thing to do

it made Nirvana

Haha that reminds me of listening to the early early radio performance where they played "Rhinoceros"--the first proper Pumpkins tune--for the first time ever, and as Billy is introducing it, D'Arcy is just going "No! No! No!"

D’arcy was such a necessary foil for Billy, the only person who could regularly check his ego and mock him and somehow retain his respect. Imo she was more important to the band than James: she would insist on certain songs retaining their original lyrics or arrangements and insist including certain songs that Billy had dismissed as daft (like Dusty & Pistol Pete and Appels + Oranjes) on the albums. He trusted her intuition, and rightfully so.

Daphne Descends 2

:|

not as bad as Behold! the Night Mare only getting a single vote

i think “daphne descends” is finally my favorite pumpkins song. flirted with it all my life

I remember him saying somewhere, maybe in liner notes or an interview, that he was thinking of rocking chairs and molasses in the south when he wrote Daphne Descends one morning alone on an acoustic guitar.

a shame "once in a while" never made album cut because that was my era-favorite years back. the version on spotify sucks compared to the one on the original japanese release

yesterday i thought how great would be if hayley williams cover 'daphne descends'.

Daphne Descends sounds a lot better now than it did at the time. Always felt this album was slightly back-loaded

weird to discover new things about an album i've loved for 20+ years but "dusty + pistol pete" is totally fleetwood mac-core, right

Some days I think that song is the best one Corgan ever wrote.

This album is incredible