Smashing Pumpkins: Fresh Fruit or Rotten Veg?

Oceania is a breakup record + more stuff about his mom

i know! i didn't say machina was the last time he tried to drag a meaningful and resonant album out of his personal life

i don't understand how monuments is an interesting conceptual exercise

it's a better meta idea than Machina imo: Billy goes OK, you think SP was like this, I'll make a record that acts as an homage to that fictional band or idea of a band that you think we were. which results in the emptiest lyrics of his career, recycled MCIS riffs, a purposely bland and faceless persona, shiny shiny pop rock production, and exaggeration everywhere. it's a taunting record - "Run2Me" sounds like a parody of their electronic songs. this isn't post-flop excuses, it's baked into the record. and besides all that, I do like the songs more: better riffs, tighter songwriting, simpler everything.

impossible for me to read "run2me" as anything but earnest, it's also not a very good song

xp ha fair enough... "Pale Horse" gets to me now, I think for all its faults Oceania was emotionally resonant and meaningful

Monuments is anything but earnest - compare Run2Me to The Spaniards (similar lyrical conceit) - the latter is so much more heartfelt and invested. on Monuments he continually just repeats these pop ciphers.

xp ha fair enough... "Pale Horse" gets to me now, I think for all its faults Oceania was emotionally resonant and meaningful

― flappy bird, Monday, November 19, 2018 12:13 PM (three seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i don't think oceania is entirely successful at communicating that feeling, and it's mostly bc the lyrics are really bland and i spend the whole record trying to ignore them (which is why i can't see monuments as a deliberately blank exercise, it just continues the trend)

i guess that sounds kinda contradictory but i think it's possible for something to be invasively bland

does billy even sing the word "lover" once on the new one? what a relief

there's no way he doesn't. I'll check. that would honestly blow my mind. yeah, that replaced the "dropped consonants" as his most annoying vocal/lyrical tic lately. ruins the chorus of Aeronaut tbh

Billy's lyrics have never been particularly strong, there was the occasional decent moment throughout the classic albums but he's always been much better at conveying feelings through the music than words.

so I'm really not noticing that Oh So Shiny has worse lyrics than anything post-breakup - maybe it does, but that's never been why I love this band, and when the music is pretty close to a return to form it's pretty easy to ignore for me

No "lover", but "Seek and You Shall Destroy" has "brigantine" (which I only ever remember from a Stone Roses song) rhymed with "libertine" and "Elohim", which is very Billy but would be more interesting if the song were better.

https://i.imgur.com/JAftJqf.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/zXPxfFO.jpg

:O

oh yeah I noticed that right away. heavy Triumph of the Will vibes with the huge banner over the arena here for a month before they played

https://i.imgur.com/fj7YniC.jpg

I can't believe I didn't vote for To Forgive in the poll

I've had a couple of listens to the new one and as much as I enjoy it, it feels like kinda a missed opportunity. It feels much more low key than the work of a "reformed" Pumpkins should. It's telling that even though Jimmy and Iha are on this, it mostly feels less like a throwback to 1991-2000 Pumpkins and more like a continuation of what's been put out under the Pumpkins name since Billy decided to resurrect it. I think Oceania was a far better collection of songs, and I'd even rank Monuments to an Elegy higher.

they played Dross tonight

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-smashing-pumpkins/2018/the-sylvee-madison-wi-7397229d.html

plus a lot of Shiny songs

oh and Heavy Metal Machine

Cool

'Heavy Metal Machine' was always one of my least favourite Pumpkins songs 1991-2000. Bit of a bitter swipe at Cobain in the lyrics, too ... ("If I were dead/would my records sell?")

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/billy-corgan-paint-color-actually-changes-the-sound-of-a-guitar

I have to admit the Captain Marvel trailer perfectly captures 1995 pic.twitter.com/nfM92vLHa8

— pixelated no longer too early for a christmas name (@pixelatedboat) December 4, 2018

more like perfectly captures an ilx post from last week

xpost

By that logic he should paint his scalp different colors between songs.

holy shit nick fury is flappy bird, it all makes sense now

Close but no

holy shit samuel l jackson is flappy bird

Warmer

Seriously it's obvious, Billy Corgan is the real Nick Fury.

holy shit billy corgan is samuel l jackson

check out the big brain on bizarro.

erasing eXcLaMaTiOn pOiNtS ilx

panda show
trees and balloons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFLD0tFwNSk

Excruciating performance on Kimmel yesterday.

I heard, what song?

They did "Silvery Sometimes" and "Knights of Malta." Billy without a guitar, shuffling around the stage like an early 2000s Ozzy Osbourne and looking like Marlon Brando in the Island of Dr Moreau. James took a solo and had some weird malfunction. I don't know. I like "Silvery" fine but it's not a show-stopper. Billy -- what can I say. I don't mind him dressing like a circus ringmaster in drag but I just...don't get it.

billy regularly going without a guitar is pretty easily the worst thing about the current incarnation of the band, his stage presence without it is so weird

otm x2

"we're gonna make this ha-pun!"

what, Billy?

disappointment

he's disenchanted the romantics

After hearing the new album a couple more times, this is increasingly becoming a "So long Billy and thanks for the memories" type of situation for me.

only 18 years late!

Well, not really - the band were inactive for 7 of those years and Billy put out the actually really great Zwan album in that period.

There's been Oceania and to a lesser degree his solo record, but otherwise it's been a very frustrating decade to be a Pumpkins fan. He's put out a lot of music in the last 11 years that just doesn't cut it.

billy regularly going without a guitar is pretty easily the worst thing about the current incarnation of the band, his stage presence without it is so weird

Maybe he's trying to compete with the overwhelming charisma of Jeff Schroeder.

Haaaaaaaaaaah!!

Zwan reissue(!): https://consequenceofsound.net/2018/12/billy-corgan-nine-projects/

oh god the prospect of a new SP best-of is....not a good one, for many reasons. pls stick to the Machina and Zwan reissues billy

we will get one of these projects in 2019 if we're lucky

Holy shit! He found the yellow Gish Strat!!!!

After 27 years, Billy Corgan has finally reunited with his "lost love" guitar stolen in 1992. The story behind the reunion is even crazier than you think https://t.co/HBNXG81Mlc pic.twitter.com/OpuBmATQb4

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) February 6, 2019

Was just about to link this. Amazing story.

“If you look at Billy, he’s very stoic,” says Heiche, who coordinated the reunion. “He doesn’t give a lot of facial expressions. But he looked down, and as she opened the case, he looked at it for a second and froze. Everybody was dead silent. And he goes, ‘That’s it.'”

crying

He slowly opened the case and froze. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s my hair.”