Cast the POLLs Aside: the definitive SMASHING PUMPKINS albums poll

Mellon Collie has all my favourite things about them even though the sequencing is a mess but idk if there's really any way to make it make sense without cutting it down. I don't really care for a lot of the heavier tracks but it's impressively solid. It's a really fantastic sounding album too - it's strange how much worse Adore sounds, which is probably the biggest weakness of that.

Adore largely has great songs and I really like what it seems to be going for but the textures are too muffled and gloomy and really let it down.

the mix on Zeitgeist is horrible iirc

I really disagree that adore sounds worse than mellon collie although I'm not sure how you're determining that!

i was just thinking about how lovely "perfect" sounds yesterday. imo it's closer to a shoegaze song than anything on sd in terms of writing, layering, etc. but every element still feels really in focus even as it rushes by

I agree that Adore is gloomy, but I find the production really striking and not dated at all. That was the first album where the songs went through dozens of different arrangements and versions before Billy settled on one that would go on the album, but going through the demos and outtakes, there aren't any songs on the album proper where I prefer one of the different versions. Some of the b-sides though... the solo vocal + piano arrangement of "Saturnine" is beautiful, and I can't stand the ugly industrial grit of the Rarities & B-Sides version. "Appels + Oranjes" is the one thing on there that sounds very 1998, but I still love it. The "What If?" demo of that song is pretty cool as a curio, sounds like a folk song, but it's no way superior to the album version. I will say that the version on "Pug" they played on the Arising! tour in 1999 fucking slays the version on Adore.

How many of y'all have heard the mono mix of Adore? It's not drastically different, although "Crestfallen" benefits from being sped up a little bit.

lol i was going to mention the first vinyl record i ever owned was adore bc i really wanted to hear the mono mix

btw this is my comp of SP2 keeper tracks...

Cottonwood Symphony
A Song for a Son
Quasar
Panopticon
The Celestials
One and All
Being Beige
That’s the Way (My Love Is)
The Rose March
United States
Sunkissed
Monuments
Stellar
99 Floors
Pinwheels
Bleeding the Orchid
Spangled
A Stitch in Time
Oceania
Superchrist
Tiberius
7 Shades of Black
As Rome Burns
Violet Rays
My Love is Winter
The Chimera
Inkless
Again, Again, Again (The Crux)
Gossamer
Owata

My contradiction here is that Chamberlain was by far the most talented artist on the Pumpkins but my favorite record of them is Adore, the only one I get back to beyond the singles.

amazing show from 20 years ago today, incredible sounding bootleg for an audience recording. insane setlist, featuring a few songs they rarely played live, only on really good nights (Here is No Why, Bodies, Farewell and Goodnight). really worth a listen if you're a big MCIS fan.

https://archive.org/details/tsp1996-04-15.flac16

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Tonight, Tonight
Zero
Fuck You (An Ode to No One)
Here is No Why
To Forgive
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Thru the Eyes of Ruby
Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
Disarm
By Starlight
Geek U.S.A.
Cherub Rock
Muzzle
---
1979
X.Y.U.
---
Germans in Leather Pants (tease)
Today
Mayonaise
---
Bodies
Silverfuck
Farewell and Goodnight

The production on Adore doesn't sound dated as much as just quite weird and singular in a way that doesn't really work for me. Mellon Collie is so warm and up-front while Adore is muffled and blurry, with a weird shine to it. I'm mostly just not fond of the muffled tone of everything, though it's definitely not as bad as Machina which went much further with that weird dull glossy tone. It's very strange to me that they went for that after how lovely the tones are on the previous albums. Sometimes it feels like it's aiming for a sort of retro production style but taken in a different direction?

I'd never thought about it before but I agree that it has a similar feeling to shoegaze. A lot of it feels more about things being implicitly felt, rather than easily picked out, especially the percussion which often doesn't have much weight to it. It's a very interesting mix. I still really like Adore a lot despite disliking the production though, Annie-Dog is the only weak track.

I hate many of the songs flappy bird listed, especially "spangled"

Adore still sounds amazing. If anything it makes me wish some bits of MCAtIS were produced the same way

ma belle
stellar
lightning strikes
violet rays
tom tom
the fellowship
astral planes
bring the light
panopticon
cottonwood symphony
one diamond, one heart
pale horse
death from above
being beige
anti-hero
one and all

that's about it

They never topped Gish. What an amazing psychedelic album.

i added spangled at the last minute. one of those songs that's so stupid but won't leave my head, even though i haven't heard it in nearly six years. i'd add tarantula to my list, i guess. seems like the consensus is that all the best Zeitgeist era songs were left off the album and relegated to those Best Buy/Target/Wal-Mart exclusive editions. What a fiasco.

I voted

voted Adore.

btw this is my comp of SP2 keeper tracks...

Cottonwood Symphony
A Song for a Son
Quasar
Panopticon
The Celestials
One and All
Being Beige
That’s the Way (My Love Is)
The Rose March
United States
Sunkissed
Monuments
Stellar
99 Floors
Pinwheels
Bleeding the Orchid
Spangled
A Stitch in Time
Oceania
Superchrist
Tiberius
7 Shades of Black
As Rome Burns
Violet Rays
My Love is Winter
The Chimera
Inkless
Again, Again, Again (The Crux)
Gossamer
Owata

― flappy bird, Friday, April 15, 2016 1:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No "Tarantula"?

very strange to look at the list of albums and realize how many arrived beyond the point where most people jumped ship.

I don't know, it's hard for me to imagine too many people hearing sucky-period smashing pumpkins first and then getting excited and working their way back. Seems more likely that the any fans of their sucky-period are a steadily diminishing portion of their older audience. But I dunno

Sorry if anyone I'd really pumped about modern SP

is

xp yeah Ray I forgot about Tarantula, I'd add that. keep in mind i almost never listen to any of those songs, but every time Billy puts out a new record, I'll get it and give it a chance. I thought Monuments to an Elegy was the most consistent thing he's done in a while, pretty much free of baggage (shortest SP album ever - who would've thought BC would ever be able to release an album under 40 minutes)

When Zeitgeist came out I got a promo and played it a lot for a review; that's the last time I really was able to invest myself in a new Pumpkins album, and overall (with the exception of "Tarantula) I hated, hated, hated that record.

Bought Oceania not long ago at WalMart because it was on sale new for $5, played it twice, made very little impact. I guess I've heard other songs here and there without getting excited. Sometimes I wonder exactly when Corgan lost the ability to nail a song/vibe, to deliver in a way that could be appreciated on a large scale? It can't all be down to generational or cultural shifts, and as much as the Machinas are troubled there are solid tunes in there.

He overthinks everything, and he's desperate to reclaim some pop success instead of embracing the cult following he has and has been slowly whittling away ever since the band got back together in 2007.

Zwan = they wrote and recorded 100+ songs, he left out most of the best ones and all the ones that were co-written with Sweeney and/or Pajo to retain publishing, is still sitting on the studio recordings of amazing songs like "Chrysanthemum" and "Rivers We Can't Cross" because he "can't stomach having to deal with the other band members," even on a legal/business level.

TheFutureEmbrace = he scrapped his all acoustic "Chicago Kid" record after reading negative comments on fucking Netphoria the morning after the one show he played, fans were complaining about no loud guitars and he shitcanned the thing. Always says "it's the best thing I've ever done, and it's just sitting in a box." Ooooookkkkk.....

Zeitgeist = Thought the band needed to be reintroduced with a simple, SUPER HEAVY record. vox are mixed way too high and dry. he fucked up the release with all those chain store exclusives. got independent record stores and the indie community pissed off again...

Teargarden by Kaleidyscope = declared the album was dead in 2009. this was his biggest disaster by far. the song were shit, jimmy just left the band, and the release schedule quickly fell off. another super ambitious project abandoned.

Oceania = good, but for the first time he conceded to making a middling paint-by-numbers record and it showed. world tour where they played the album in full was undersold. i saw the barclays show in NYC that ended up coming out on blu ray and dvd and the place by less than half full.

Monuments to an Elegy = the best of the post reunion records. the concept is "we're going to emulate the version of the band that people remember but never actually existed." i.e. easily digestible pop songs with meaningless lyrics and catchy octave chord riffs and yeah it's super short. drums are finally good again. still a failure, sold 30,000 copies, he abandoned the follow up "Day for Night" and well, now we're here...

Listening to them again after a very long time away, what really hits me about "Thirty Three" and "1979" is how they feel like a direct mixture of the best qualities of Buckingham and Nicks' songs on Tusk. It's a very specific vibe that I wish the band (in its first incarnation; I have no idea about the post-90s records) had captured more often.

(You'd expect Corgan's work with Hole to repeat this quality, but it doesn't, maybe because Courtney's vocals take those songs to different places)

I don't care much for it, but "once upon a time" totally had that vibe of which you speak

"Obscured" too

He overthinks everything, and he's desperate to reclaim some pop success instead of embracing the cult following he has and has been slowly whittling away ever since the band got back together in 2007.

iirc he also says he doesn't really listen to his own recordings after they've been released. which I guess isn't that weird.

is that quote from after 2007? bc he listened to his own albums all the time in the 90s, could dig up some interviews on Starla.org... allegedly he went on a road trip in 1997 and listened to MCIS on a really tinny stereo and freaked out to some of his friends about how nasal and thin his voice sounded, then he got vocal lessons for Adore...

Listening to them again after a very long time away, what really hits me about "Thirty Three" and "1979" is how they feel like a direct mixture of the best qualities of Buckingham and Nicks' songs on Tusk. It's a very specific vibe that I wish the band (in its first incarnation; I have no idea about the post-90s records) had captured more often.

― Tim F, Sunday, 17 April 2016 22:17 (Yesterday) Permalink

sounds like "Adore" to me!

Or the should've been a double A-side: "Meladori Magpie" & "Rotten Apples"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FtVaq-xVh0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE8vYTHFIfc

sounds like "Adore" to me!

lol i was about to say the same thing but i assume tim's spent time with adore

I'm not hearing it, except for "once upon a time"

Then again, I don't know how 1979 sounds Mac-ish either. More like modern English. Whatev!

Is it like when ppl were hallucinating junior boys sounding like hall & Oates?

Yeah, no, Adore has a vibe which is not unconnected but which is not same thing IMO.

From memory the album is a lot less sharply drawn than these songs, for starters.

If any of y'all stopped at Adore, the Machina albums are really worth listening to. Unfortunately, it's an unfinished work, but there are tons of great songs and tunes and sounds on both records. Billy described the guitar sound on Machina as "Judas Priest meets Simple Minds." Really obvious on these songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOD7uK4Z98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q10-jHmXr9I

Here's an attempt at creating the complete machina.

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.no/2014/05/the-smashing-pumpkins-glass-and.html

allegedly he went on a road trip in 1997 and listened to MCIS on a really tinny stereo and freaked out to some of his friends about how nasal and thin his voice sounded, then he got vocal lessons for Adore...

I like Billy's voice a whole lot more before these "vocal lessons"

it's strange, Adore has some of his best vocals, particularly "Blank Page." after those lessons, he was able to hit higher notes without screeching or distorting. But that passion in trying to hit notes he couldn't was what made his singing so endearing. I was listening to "Blank Page" the other day and my girlfriend thought D'arcy was singing. But circa Zwan, and especially when he came back with Zeitgeist, his voice just sounded absolutely terrible. Dropping consonants, just sounding like Leo Kottke, "geese farts on a muggy day"...

Here's an attempt at creating the complete machina.

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.no/2014/05/the-smashing-pumpkins-glass-and.html

― satins favourite son, Monday, April 18, 2016 1:01 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is awesome! thanks for sharing

If any of y'all stopped at Adore, the Machina albums are really worth listening to

I believe this. I Will probably never listen to them by choice.

Some of the songs from Machina are spectacular ("Age of Innocence" and "Cash Car Star"-the latter could've been a big hit), but the
production is atrocious-a thick, over-compressed nightmare

Also, I think ADORE might have the band's best song ever-"Annie-Dog". Gorgeous ballad.

xp yeah, "Cash Car Star" was the song Virgin wanted as the first single from Machina - again, some executive implored Billy "constant KROQ rotation!" - but ever since Adore, he's made a habit of self-sabotage. The most egregious example is cutting the Rick Rubin produced version of "Let Me Give the World to You" from Adore literally out of spite. It was supposed to be the lead single, and at a meeting with label people, Billy picked up on the fact that no one them liked the album except for that song so he cut it. It was supposed to be the last song, after "Blank Page." That would've been a big hit, and salvaged the album and his career. Unbelievable.

Corgan really is like Prince-the man needs to be reigned in by someone with sense. Maybe Butch Vig could do that. Who knows

My favorite abandoned Corgan project might be the novel has was supposedly writing 15 years ago