Smashing Pumpkins: Fresh Fruit or Rotten Veg?

('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.

Congleton or Meldal-Johnson would be great yeah

i've seen people elsewhere really hating the production on the new one but i think it sounds pretty good apart from being a bit brickwalled, definitely what i want the pumpkins to sound like

"Travels" is a 9 out of 10 for me.

It's the type of song that could have played over the final scene of an episode of My So-Called Life so let's just say my tastes haven't changed much in 23 years.

yeah it's so good! and i really love "with sympathy" now

i really like Marchin' On, more than many similar classic SP tracks

i love "marchin' on" it has that mcis-vintage billy snarl. i've sorta upgraded my opinion: whole second half of this is wonderful, and overall it's a much better pop pumpkins record than monuments

my favorite songs on this ("silvery sometimes," "travels," "with sympathy") really do sound like a continuation of machina ii????

flappy you hear this yet

i listened to Oceania again and my opinion didn't change - it's ok and has some solid songs but could have really used some of the more tightly constructed pop songs that the new one has.

still really enjoying the new one, even Solara is growing on me. it really does feel like a continuation of the Machinas in both style and quality, just less blurry and with strings replacing some of the whirling synths

i'm also a huge fan of Silvery Sometimes revisiting the vibe of 1979 somewhat because 1979 is such a perfect song that it was a bit of a shame he never mined that vibe more, like Perfect came close but that had been it until now

Brad - I have. First thoughts no surprises: Billy's vocals are too high, Jimmy's drums are too compressed, and I can barely hear James. "Marchin' On" is an amusing flex, bringing out his "Glass' Theme" style growl for the first time in years. Silvery Sometimes is still my favorite, but tbh I liked the songs on Monuments more. am I the only one that'll take Monuments over Oceania, Z, Teargarden, and this? Recycled Pastichio Medley riffs, short songs, some nice psychedelia a la backend of MCIS, and it's short like this one. As with all Pumpkins releases I'll like it more with time.

I think one thing that makes it feel uneven and aimless is that is literally a collection of 8 potential comeback singles.

and of course... it's WAY. TOO. LOUD!!!!!!

but it's good, and I'm more happy the band is doing well more than anything. this encourages reissues and vault stuff, and they still kick ass live, so I feel good about the whole thing. honestly I'll take one out of eight at this point, and like I said, more will grow one me with time.

xp I feel like "try try try"had a bit of that "1979" feel too.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-smashing-pumpkins-shiny-and-oh-so-bright-vol-1-lp-no-past-no-future-no-sun/

oh fucking come on

easy target

i've seen a lot of people elsewhere claim this is their worst ever album, worse than zeitgeist and i'm just totally baffled by that assertion

every SP album except Gish has had mixed reviews and a vocal contingent of fans that hate it only to come around years later. imo it is the worst one, just at the moment.

I mean, case in point:

At least Monuments had the oddity “Drums + Fife,” a little fillip featured the titular instruments and something like a statement of purpose: “I will bang this drum til my dying day.”

Drum + Fife, now an overlooked gem. Give me a break

it's a good review though tbh

Lead single “Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)” feels mercilessly whittled down from a more interesting song—the ticked eighth notes uncannily resemble a group of people counting the seconds before they can walk away from each other.

I liked this line:

...2014’s Monuments to an Elegy had a similar woolly blankness, a self-erasing anonymity that seemed to proceed from the assumption that if Corgan stood as still as possible, maybe no one would notice him on the radio and kick him off.

xp lol just copied that bit to post here

This and the SKM review from a week or two ago confirm for me the previously sketchy assertion that the 'Fork has rediscovered its love of pans.

i just think that it's weird they panned this one, out of all the chances they've had before, they weren't even this mean to Zeitgeist at the time

idk that “silvery sometimes” paragraph is just kind of a projection that yields an easy joke, which is i guess has been the official writing style of the internet for a while now

weird to read this alongside jayson’s evenhanded review of oceania from a few years ago

I think he's right about the lyrics, though. I'm not a huge fan of Oceania but at least he was writing more meaningful/less nonsensically obtuse lyrics. That whole album is about his mom and his break-up with ... (I forgot her name, not trying to be funny, Veronica something?) Ogilala had this problem but every song had at least a couple great vocal / lyrical hooks (Processional & The Long Goodbye, Aeronaut, Half-Life).

of course he's right about the lyrics

but like even when billy's lyrics are meaningful they're not good. "silvery" was one of the first times i haven't cringed at a single line in a sp song in... over a decade

yeah, i don't like most smashing pumpkins lyrics, so I appreciate how they kind of melt into the background here. "she stabs the empty clock" excepted. that's a real decision of a lyric.

Oceania lyrics are similar, but they annoy me more because of the songwriting and production.

Silvery is great. he was never a great lyricist but when he's on he's on, he can sell a line like "It's a long way / it's a long way to get back home" and save the song.

and more than most I think intent and context is crucial to everything Billy does. Ogilala is remarkably relaxed & clear-headed, Oceania has an emotional arc, Monuments is an interesting conceptual exercise (songs meant to mimic a perfect version of a band that never existed), Zeitgeist has the late Bush era paranoia / political angle. here, he is singing about nothing. he may not be a great lyricist but it doesn't matter as much when he means it. the Shiny songs were all written with a broad commercial conceit in mind, and I'm struggling to find anything to connect to. if I can't get down with the production, most of the songwriting, or what he's singing about, what's left?

i don't understand how monuments is an interesting conceptual exercise but it seems what this record lacks for you is a conceptual framework

songwriting is p easily the strongest thing going here

also i prefer billy obtuse to direct 100000000000 percent of the time

it's been almost 20 years since he dragged a relatively meaningful and resonant album out of his personal life (machina, which isn't exactly great lyrically in itself) and everything since then has been whatever (zeitgeist's bush-era paranoia appears on, what, 2-3 songs total? i'd prefer that he sang about nothing on that record). all i care about is good songs at this point; this record has several good songs