Smashing Pumpkins: Fresh Fruit or Rotten Veg?

how does it flow as a record? three singles so far are all pretty different

it doesn't really flow at all, it's definitely a rebranded ep

right, so not even the jarring but thought through sequence of MCIS? just a collection of songs?

yep

epic

https://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/billycorgan.jpg

it says...something that Billy finally gave up on making a "proper album" or overarching experience *just* as he finally managed to wrangle most of the original lineup back together, but I'm not sure what

this is pretty easily billy's best album since Zwan at least, very pleasantly surprised by this. Knights of Malta and Solara are the only weak tracks and even then neither is that bad (at least relative to a lot of their post-reunionn material). i hope billy can keep things together long enough for vol. 2

idk if i consider it as good as oceania (which i really turned around on after the sp poll) but it's encouraging for sure

Oceania still doesn't do much for me, it's not terrible but the melodies don't stick with me at all

that's exactly how i felt about it for the longest time! not sure what changed

I should give it another try, it just washed over me blankly the half-dozen or so times I tried to give it my full attention

Can’t get over the drumming

yeah mike byrne is terrible, it's a hurdle

local modern rock station is playing the new one that is vaguely in the 1979 vein, it's pretty damn good!

that's "silvery sometimes"! it's a great song

Nothing wrong with Mike Byrne's drumming on Oceania. He's no Jimmy Chamberlin, mind.

counterpoint i'm a drummer and i know what i'm talking about

Yes, so are many people. Including myself.

I personally don't understand how one can listen to the drum track on 'Panopticon' or the title track and reach the conclusion that he's a "horrible" drummer.

cool

one nice thing about the new record is there are a few vocal moments that sound like old billy. it's the best his voice has sounded since zwan imo

solo record helped him sort through some of the vocal shit?

i assume! he did sound p good on that record too. i can't imagine rick rubin worked very hard on the new one but maybe he was able to coax this quality out of billy

I imagine Rick Rubin did his usual style of producing, which is drop in every couple of weeks and lie down on a couch for a couple of hours, make suggestions and go home.

maybe the stripped down rubin shtick arrangements forced billy to care more about vocal performance. or just tea + astrology?

Billy's a Pisces, he picks up on those things.

albini plays words with friends during sessions to keep his ears fresh. rubin naps on couches during sessions to keep his rubin fresh.

"panopticon" is a ridiculously good song i always forget, but byrne is overplaying through the whole thing and has no swing, it's just like a grid of tom hits

I don't feel that Byrne is playing any more or less than Chamberlin would have done on the same track. Indeed, I've often heard criticism of Chamberlin's own playing in general that goes along similar lines - that he's too flashy, that he overplays etc. Obviously, I disagree.

I agree with you that 'Panopticon' is a ridiculously good song - just stacks of guitars playing in harmony. Superb.

panopticon starts like a good baroness song but loses me after the first verse

Don't think I ever shared this here. Original mix of Inkless, officially released as a b-side to The Celestials single. Sounds so much better, vocals are right where they need to be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Yl2NKGejw

I'm falling more in love with panopticon as I relisten. But there's something about the construction of the song that does a bad job of hiding the weakest points. "There's a sun that shines IIIIiiiin" is just a really crap moment, and it feels like the whole song is designed to prop it up for my hatred.

post-Adore, Billy has had a bad habit of making his songs a minute / two minutes longer than they need to be. unnecessarily repeating choruses and vamping and adding an extra minute in between where the song feels like it should end and a guitar solo or something. Untitled is a good example: you could easily cut out the minute preceding the guitar solo and make the song much tighter.

I disagree, I think 'Untitled' is fine as it is... same with a few (although not all, granted) MACHINA tracks.

('Heavy Metal Machine' is well over five minutes too long, for one.)

that mix of "inkless" is great thank you for sharing it flappy. def one of the best oceania songs but the way the original mix prioritizes the guitars turns it into a kickass zwan song

it took a few listens but i really love "travels." it's, y'know, a post-machina sunny happy billy melody but something about it (maybe the arrangement of the guitars?) makes it feel like it'd fit in with the machina b-sides

I disagree, I think 'Untitled' is fine as it is... same with a few (although not all, granted) MACHINA tracks.

― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Wednesday, November 14, 2018 2:51 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like Untitled a lot, but I'm struggling to think of any pre-Machina songs (maybe some on Adore?) that are unnecessarily long. HMM is a good example but I'm thinking more of extra verses, vamping, and buildups. the songwriting in their imperial phase is really tight.

New profile by Dan Hyman in The Ringer:

he Smashing Pumpkins have certainly disagreed about a great many things during their time, but one thing they all seem collectively agree on now is that they aren’t and never were friends. At least not in the traditional sense.

“It was never like, ‘Hey, do you want to go to the baseball game?’” Chamberlin says with a laugh, calling from his home in the Chicago suburbs. “Sure, Billy and I would hang out on a sports level, but for the most part the band wasn’t really a social organization. The power of the music was partly predicated on the fact that the music was really the only reason we got together.”

That’s not to say Corgan hadn’t always hoped it could be otherwise. “I think one of the great mistakes I made was asking my band to be my family when my family wasn’t my family,” the singer says. “And that put a pressure on them that just wasn’t realistic. Because you didn’t have the kind of friendship that you would assume would then translate to being in a room 12 hours a day and making a song. Somehow we were able to commit there in a way we couldn’t commit to, ‘Let’s go out to dinner.’ Me, having grown up with very messy family stuff … that was very painful for me. ’Cause I couldn’t help but take it as a slight.”

https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/11/15/18096080/smashing-pumpkins-reunion-billy-corgan-james-iha-jimmy-chamberlin-album-tour

i was thinking this morning that i would be extremely satisfied with a new sp album with james/jimmy recorded with a non-washed up rock producer (congleton imo) full of songs like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0F6qS1XlSM

too much to hope for lol

Heard "1979" playing in a shop while picking up lunch -- it sounded pretty darn good (and I don't usually rate it one way or another). But man, that beat is crispy & upfront in the mix!

Congleton would be good -- tbh, after his work with Baroness, I think Fridmann could be a good option too

bonus points: thanks to his years of producing the Flaming Lips, we know he can handle...personalities

which Lips records did he record? Yoshimi and Soft Bulletin sound good, but as we were discussing elsewhere the new Interpol album sounds like garbage.

As long as Billy doesn't produce himself, I'd be excited for anything. Doesn't seem like it has any effect anyway post-2000, with the exception of Ogilala, where I think Rick Rubin had a much more hands on approach, particularly when it came to which songs/song ideas Billy should pursue. Like, it blew my mind but also made complete sad, perfect sense that "Aeronaut" was just some silly castoff thing he hadn't thought much of and Rubin had to convince him to finish writing it. I know opinions on Ogilala are divided here but imo it's by far the best thing he's done since 2000.

billy and shirley are working together

eh i don't think i'd want fridmann to do his overdriven thing to the smashing pumpkins, good as baroness' purple is. i also thought of justin meldal-johnsen but i want him to record everyone

fridmann generally sucks ass

i don't remember that baroness record sounding like shit though so maybe he doesn't all the time

fridmann recorded my favorite thursday album (no devolucion) and it bears almost none of his trademarks, so yeah it can vary a lot

also there are several bands for whom that spiky overcooked sound really works (lips, zazen boys, oddly enough low). interpol uh never seemed like one of them

@flappy he's co-produced almost every Lips album from In a Priest Driven Ambulance on.