Cast the POLLs Aside: the definitive SMASHING PUMPKINS albums poll

first album best album

looks like no album is gonna pull away with this one. genuinely surprised no one has mentioned the Greatest Hits

flappy bird - awesome, thank you, DLing now.

I really, really want to review one (or both if two) versions of Machina if they're ever reissued.

The only post-Adore Pumpkins song I listen to is "White Spyder." That song is a monster.

This would have been the ideal way to end the career. Weird to think there was a moment where this looked like all she wrote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2H1y755PQk

(Ack, this is the Judas O version - the Machina II version is better.)

THIS version. This one.

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

Something telling and perfect about the vocal track cut short too soon.

that Judas O version sucks. love the Machina II one

imo they're both good

what do you think about "Heavy Metal Machine," brad? imo that's the worst thing SP1 did by a longshot

"heavy metal machine" is awful, machina would be 100 percent better without it as much as it's "important" to the "concept"

i liked it a lot when i was 12 though, i thought the chorus was super pretty

agree 100%, every time i go back to reevaluate Machina i'm like "this is actually pretty great, i like the production now, and the songs rule," then it hits HMM and im just like FUCK. but yeah, take that out and the only clunker left is Blue Skies Bring Tears, which is just a lousy arrangement. i love his acoustic demo of that song. also Raindrops and Sunshowers, another shit version. this straightforward take on it is fucking awesome though, leaked in 2014:

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

mellon collie was one of those defining albums of my early music life so that's where my vote goes

i like "raindrops" as it is on the record. it sorta sounds like a rainstorm

"blue skies bring tears" is weird. i like all the versions of it ok but the arising arrangement is clearly >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

agreed. whereas "The Imploding Voice" is vastly improved as it appears on Machina. such a beautiful/heavy song. perfectly captures that "Judas Priest meets Simple Minds" vision that Billy had for the album for whatever reason

was typing this on the kim thayil corgan mockery thread but figured it made more sense here, if it makes sense at all: their arc would look a lot more continuous and coherent if adore had either gone full on for the eye/ava-adore/TEITBITE "alt rock bands are going electronica!" kinda thing, more obviously bridging MCIS and machina, or if it had been all-acoustic, this dreamy singer-songwriter kind of sideways move, a clearer kind of 'therapy' record, after which it's sort of obvious that the "return to rock" follow up will be a hollow, hearts-not-in-it kind of thing and somehow it makes total sense that what had been one of the biggest rock bands in the world (maybe the biggest?) five years earlier would put out a flop concept album nobody besides fans remembers and break up.

who knows though. the production on that record is just horrible and it's totally possible that with a slightly different lineup of material, a less grating and gooey sound, and the right singles it could have limped by. "dross" and "cash car star," which iirc leaked well in advance of the album, suggested at least that if it was a 'return to rock' it was one that rock fans would like, even if it was out of step with alt-rock radio in 2000. mind you i think the album's actual problems are with 'heavy metal machine' etc, not 'with every light,' but man it is a mess all put together.

Can't remember if I've already posted this, but Billy said in a recent fan Q&A that after Adore tanked with critics and fans and his label, he "re-cloaked" - he talked about being an abused child, you "cloak" and put up defense to keep yourself from getting hurt. after cutting his veins open with the Pumpkins' first four records, he re-cloaked with Machina and in his words, hasn't opened up again since. A common complaint amongst hardcore SP fans is how shallow and insincere his lyrics have been in the past fifteen years, maybe starting with Zwan. I thought it was pretty striking, really sad, and while that might read as an excuse to some people, I think it's obvious that he was profoundly devastated by losing his mother, his wife, his drummer, and his fame in the span of like three years. No wonder he's been so fucked up ever since.

btw I just saw them on the new tour and it's definitely the best nu-pumpkins set i've seen. schroeder is kind of a wonderful guitarist, all of his little improvisations added a ton to like..."soma" even, a song i feel you can't really add much to guitar-wise. jimmy's only onstage for about half of it but it's so thrilling to see him drum, especially with the subtle ways he's rearranged the drum parts for the softer pallette. "eye" live was kinda incredible. they've been closing with "the spaniards" which sounded amazing and is maybe my favorite nu-pumpkins track?

the original vinyl press from 1996 has a totally re-ordered sequence, it's an interesting alternate perspective but in no way better than the standard sequence:

I've been listening to this ordering on Spotify via the playlist feature and I like it a lot better this way! the flow just sounds more natural. it makes me better appreciate the tracks I paid less attention to back in the day. nb I've always skipped around the original album more than listened to it straight through. I like the idea of Mellon Collie as six killer EPs rather than two sprawling CDs.

recent setlist:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-smashing-pumpkins/2016/saenger-performing-arts-theater-new-orleans-la-3f1c943.html

fuck is "Hummer" a great song or what

I was at that saenger show and it was incredible but my god the crowd sucked

were they begging for the hits over and over

i wonder what % of smashing pumpkins fans feature either shitty sound or audience

not even that, just people talking loudly throughout the (relatively quiet) set and many ppl abandoning the show halfway through

xpost shows, i meant

I saw the DC show of the current tour, and the crowd was mostly older, very respectful. i feel like the Pumpkins have a good history with DC. like, the biggest laugh of the night was when Billy began to introduce the Siamese Dream suite, people started calling out song titles, and he just stops and says "OK, this isn't the part of the show where you yell dumb shit at me."

Pisces Iscariot

Sort of stunned by all the love for Pisces Iscariot. Why Pisces over SD? By the same token, nobody's said anything about TAFH.

I only see 3 or 4 other people who mentioned it as their favorite.

I'm guessing they had about 40 or more non-album tracks to choose from when putting this together and it seems like they purposely avoided what could have been a more frantic or less-cohesive record. It doesn't feel like anything is out of place. It might be their saddest-sounding and most psychedelic record. It's also the only one where the majority of the songs are shorter without as many huge bloated mid-sections and codas, with "Starla" as the only epic and "Obscured" as the only other song that stretches past 5 minutes. I feel like most of the songs were recorded around the same time as Gish, and I hugely prefer it to that record.

And in a way it gives me the impression that Aeroplane was a wasted opportunity to try something similar. All the b-sides on Zero (minus Pistachio) plus 6 or 7 others pulled from the other discs could have been an equally great record.

i used to have TAFH. i enjoyed the Zero single but would sometimes be a bit overwhelmed by the rest. i'd be curious to see what everyone's top ten were from that box

Only caught them live once, on the Machina tour, one of the last shows with Melissa Auf der Maur. I was so excited to see them - I was about 14 - but they suffered from the worst, most buzzsaw-like guitar tone I've ever endured at a show. It was so awful that I actually took off early, midway through "Soma", even - at 14! One of my first major disappointments in life.

And in a way it gives me the impression that Aeroplane was a wasted opportunity to try something similar. All the b-sides on Zero (minus Pistachio) plus 6 or 7 others pulled from the other discs could have been an equally great record.

Yeah a "third disc" type deal of similar length to the others could have been great, with "Aeroplane Flies High" itself as the big fuckoff penultimate epic.

I feel like most of the songs were recorded around the same time as Gish, and I hugely prefer it to that record.

it's actually mostly songs recorded for SD and post-Gish b-sides. the only Gish era songs are "Blue," "A Girl Named Sandoz," and "La Dolly Vita." Everything else was recorded during the SD sessions. "Starla," "Landslide," and "Soothe" are the in-between songs.

TAFH has some of my all time favorite SP songs. my top 10:

Rotten Apples
Meladori Magpie
My Blue Heaven
The Aeroplane Flies High
Set the Ray to Jerry
The Boy
God
Marquis in Spades
Blank
Pastichio Medley (still one of the coolest things they ever did, the Pumpkins' own Revolution 9-esque riff collage)

Pisces Iscariot is just really pretty!

xp Interesting. I guess I assumed it was an Incesticide type of thing where at least half of the songs were earlier recordings.

It was kind of awesomely bold that they put out TAFH as this fancy-shmancy box set with the 45 case and all that - IIRC at the time, gimmicky box sets of that kind were pretty rare and it did stand out as a prestige Christmas item or whatever. But it also meant that a LOT of fans never heard any or at least most of those songs. Feel like a second Pisces Iscariot would have been the better move if they could find a way to package it where it still felt like an 'event' appropriate to a band at their commercial peak etc.

Like, it could have either been one double-disc with everything on it, or a single-disc deal where you just accept that some songs are only going to be had by those devoted enough to collect CD singles. Who knows though? As it was the thing sold pretty damn well for a five-disc box set with 28 'new' songs on it.

tbf the only songs exclusive to the TAFH boxset were the covers on the BWBW single. all the other singles were released separately w/ all the b-sides throughout 1996. and fwiw i think the covers are the most disposable of all the songs on TAFH. were CD singles more widely available in '96 though?

Yeah, by "new" I meant "new to people who don't buy CD singles," which surely has to be the overwhelming majority of the five million (?) or so people who had bought Mellon Collie.

CD singles always sold better in the UK, right? or was that just vinyl? by the time I started buying music ~1998, they were phased out except at somewhere like Bleecker St and other places that sold bootlegs, too

but yeah, obviously most people that bought MCIS and SD were not searching for CD singles and imports

I'm American and started buying music around 1995, and probably considered it a bigger part of my life than most of my peers, but I think at most I ever owned, like, four CD singles. There weren't that many of them at the stores and price-wise they seemed like a huge ripoff, particularly if you already owned the album and therefore had the 'big' song.

I loved the shit out of maxi singles and so did my deeper music head friends, but it definitely wasn't what most people went for. But then neither were box sets.

were CD singles more widely available in '96 though?

Not really. Many maxi-singles - especially from Gish and SD era - were difficult to find outside of imports. Import singles were always kinda risky - spending $9.99 or $10.99 just to hear 1 or 2 b-sides that could potentially suck. At least in the case of the Mellon Collie singles, they were EP length and "Zero" specifically probably contained about 50 minutes of music.

iirc NIN's "Further Down The Spiral" was a pretty hot deal at $5.99.

NIN also cannily branded every release as a numbered "Halo," pumping them up as essential pieces of the canon rather than just product shoved out by the label.