Cast the POLLs Aside: the definitive SMASHING PUMPKINS albums poll

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

It was supposed to be the last song, after "Blank Page."

in retrospect he was completely right to cut it (and I sort of doubt that in the '98 pop universe "let me give the world to you" would've done anything)

From the MACHINA era I always had a deep love for "this time", still one of their best songs. But usually people don't care about it, unfortunately.

i also sorta love the production on machina but when i bought it i was too young to know any better, and now it's too late

also idk if that "let me give the world to you" track placement story is apocryphal, it's sorta clear to me that adore was supposed to end with "blissed and gone," thus "17"

idk, "Let Me Give the World to You" would've been way more appealing to radio than "Ava Adore." they should've made "Perfect" the first single. i agree that ending on "Blank Page" is just absolutely devastating, just no hope left...

i've come to love the production on Machina. really colorful and gooey. pretty much everything on there except "Heavy Metal Machine" and "Blue Skies Bring Tears" is great, and yeah, "This Time" is a beautiful song, also explicitly about the breakup of the band.

xp it's not apocryphal, Billy revealed the whole LMGTWTY fiasco in the liner notes to the 2014 Adore reissue

shouts out "blissed and gone" one of their best ever b-sides

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es-StbxiMBs

'machina' was the first album I heard of them (I was around 11/12), although my interest started around 'adore' when I saw the videos of 'perfect' and 'Ava adore'.
It started an obsession with this band, which is weird because when I was a big fan of them they were ending. And I remember so well to find some songs of the machina era so weird and strange that I didn't know what to do with them. I spent a lot of nights trying to imagine what the hell was going on with 'glass and the ghost children'.
In some ways 'machina' has a more nostalgic resonance on me than 'Mellon collie' or 'Siamese Dream', which I still think has some of their best songs (I'm kinda bored, soz).

yeah "blissed and gone" was supposed to end the record

I am ready to reveal that this small offering is "Blissed and Gone," the track I so rashly left off of 'Adore.' And what precipitated the decision might be found in an encounter I had with producer and friend Rick Rubin, in whom management had asked to survey my progress; which at that time had ground to a standstill. "Whoa," he said when hearing the looped version of the greater song. "Whoa." in this I took whoa to mean "not good," and abandoned it like so many others that were worthy. The last of which was Rick's oversight of "Let Me Give the World to You," which the label had pegged as their only hope to sell more plastic. So let the circle be complete, because if you are reading this, then you've made them happy.

lol of course the same thing happened when billy like searched flood's face for some meaning when he first played him "set the ray to jerry"

"Set the Ray to Jerry" would've fit nicely after "Porcelina" instead of "Take Me Down" or in place of "In the Arms of Sleep." Two songs you can't really cut, though.

oddly interested in listening to that 'reconstructed' machina, esp. if it means hearing the machina ii tracks in something other than the really distorted and shitty sounding mp3s i've had since it came out. but the links to the files pop up big browser security warnings and i am kinda overly cautious about those.

this might be an improvement on what you have, it's a virgin cd promo of Machina II, still sourced from vinyl, but better than the Agnew rip that most people have, which runs fast

https://archive.org/details/machina.II.ver.Virgin

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.