POLLcelina of the Vast Oceans - ILM artist poll #87 - SMASHING PUMPKINS (voting open until 2 April 2018)

oh lol i wasn't thinking about zwan but true

re: the bad vocals/mixing post-Adore, I believe he took voice lessons (lol) so I assume his thought process was along the lines of, "now that my voice is a PERFECT INSTRUMENT I'm not going to try to bury it"

lmao

"a flower's still a flower crushed to dust inside my hand"

as verbose and obtuse he can be, i'm just in awe of that line and how it so eloquently conveys the self-destruction of SP, how he drove it into the ground, and yet how beautiful it was and how beautiful it remains. "we were going somewhere." it's just a marvel of a lyric & song, the optimistic inverse of Jellybelly.

xxp

re: the bad vocals/mixing post-Adore, I believe he took voice lessons (lol) so I assume his thought process was along the lines of, "now that my voice is a PERFECT INSTRUMENT I'm not going to try to bury it"

― had (crüt), Monday, March 19, 2018 12:34 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he took voice lessons before Adore, and it shows. the vocals on every record after that are inexplicable, though I chalk up most of his inexplicable creative decisions to psychosis brought on by the relative failure and rejection of Adore. he hasn't made a truly thru and thru sincere record since then, with the exception of Ogilala.

one of the things i for some reason really enjoy thinking about whenever i reengage with my sp fandom is how this Objectively Ridiculous person made Objectively Ridiculous music but there's something about the particular presentation, the particular collapse of influences (deep goth genuinely loves boston and cheap trick and queen but we're in the '90s!) in the first five records that makes it work where everything since (aside from like 70 percent of the zwan discography and parts of future embrace and ogilala) has felt undermined or outright ruined by second guessing, which i guess if you're an Objectively Ridiculous person the moment you start questioning yourself is where the nimbus of your exaggerated personality falls apart, where you just kinda stand revealed as this kinda weird dumb baby who had interesting taste and a consuming totality of vision which wasn't ever exactly intelligent or consistent but which was still oddly mesmerizing and you can't ever get back to that bc you have care too much about what your audience thinks or wants and have so much contempt for it

i mean the whole glass story is basically "i have contempt for my audience. this is like the wall"

I think he panicked as soon as Adore was finished and knew the end or the inevitable decline of the band was coming and he couldn't let SP go out with anything but a super BANG! so how do you top MCIS? I guess he thought the answer was actually making a concept album.

i guess i don't blame him and the approach produced some of his best work imo but like what is the purpose of a song like "heavy metal machine," it's performative rock

oh god i forgot there was a third version of "blue skies bring tears"

yeah I love Machina, I just don't think its 'concept' stands up to scrutiny because I don't think there's really much there. but the songs are great. Heavy Metal Machine is justified only by the concept, that they could take the most braindead butt rock riff and turn it into a satirical thing, "if i were dead would my record sell?" yet they played it at nearly every concert in 2000 and in 2007!

all right here's something embarrassing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU5-EG7eVLw

i watched this, like, daily when i was a kid. at the time (don't ask me why i know this ok i was an aspiring anime music video creator) amvs were harvested from videotape and then crudely edited together on a computer and i thought this one, set to one of my favorite sp songs and including most of my favorite series, was just sooo beautifully and almost seamlessly woven together, lol

anyway "with every light" slaps

am i the only one who thinks that 'this time' it's the best 'machina I' song and of their best?
weirdly i also became a fan with 'machina'. i can't count the nights i tried to figure out what 'glass and the ghost children' was all about, as my English back then was even poorer than it is nowadays.

lmao that's awesome brad

i love that song though, it is possibly my favorite sp track to air drum to

"The Everlasting Gaze" is funny because it's such a deliberate, forced attempt to Rawk Out With Your Old Drummer Out, but the last 20-30 seconds rocks so hard you don't care

also this might seem weird but Machina and the Manics' Know Your Enemy are inextricably linked in my mind, both seventh albums following their respective broody keyboard albums, both kinda bloated and try-hard, both with lead singles that announced "hey we're not dead!", sometimes literally

With Every Light and This Time are highlights on Machina. Sincere and moving ballads.

Y'all heard The Everlasting Gaze demo "Disco King"? a real stone jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf7GrTnvX6g

also this might seem weird but Machina and the Manics' Know Your Enemy are inextricably linked in my mind, both seventh albums following their respective broody keyboard albums, both kinda bloated and try-hard, both with lead singles that announced "hey we're not dead!", sometimes literally

huh i like this analogy. they're also both better than their reputations suggest

I remember reading about how the cover for KYE was originally going to be a mirror (because the enemy...is YOU!!) and tbh that's almost Corgan level pretension lol

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Time_youcover01.jpg

I think my ballot is done. 25 was a dastardly number to have to whittle it down to.

i had a conversation with someone recently where he declared the best pumpkins release is the 1979 ep and tbh hard to disagree

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, March 19, 2018 2:48 AM (sixteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I disagree.

The last Pumpkins album I own is Machina 1. I don't know whether to go digging in the reunion albums or stick to the stuff I used to love.

Oceania is the only one that you really need to hear, as it's excellent. 'Panopticon' in particular rules. Predictably, Brad is wrong about the record.

nah I agree with Brad - it's making all the right moves but the songs just aren't that exciting or moving

Anyhow, thinking about what tracks I vote for, several selections from MACHINA spring to mind (and no, MACHINA II isn't better - don't be daft) as well as one or two things from Pisces Iscariot ... I can only think of one track from Adore that is a no-brainer for a Pumpkins ballot.

I was excited and moved by the record, therefore yer wrong.

I can only think of one track from Adore that is a no-brainer for a Pumpkins ballot

this explains everything!

fun's over i guess

I'm bumping all my Adore votes up a spot.

xxpost:

It's an incredible track, though!

I like Adore a lot, but if you're only going to pick 25 tracks then they might as well be incredible.

can't wait to read more of your challenging and intelligent opinions in the rollout

There's nothing "challenging" about it - basically, this band's high points were/are incredible, and while there's a lot on Adore that's highly listenable and very good, and while I have a lot of time for the record - there's not a lot on it that comes close to the very top of what this band in their original incarnation were capable of.

it’s For Martha right

Adore has some pretty high highs, Behold! The Night Mare especially is incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohGwSHQ7Vdc

25 is so brutal

My shortlist is down to 27... It was pretty easy to put together without overthinking but cutting two tracks and ordering them is going to be tough.

listening to Mary Star of the Sea for the first time in years now and it's surprisingly pretty good? probably better than both Machinas and certainly better than all the SP mk2 material by a long way

yeah it's a great power-pop record

honestly I'd probably enjoy it more if whenever I listen to it I wasn't reminded of how needlessly sour he was towards his new bandmates

like obv it's also a problem with SP but it's especially jarring against the posi vibes

and most of their best songs were left off of it (Chrysanthemum, My Life + Times, Cast a Stone, Rivers We Can’t Cross, Friends as Lovers, Glorious).

i've just done a 50-song list and just realized I left 'quiet' and 'blank page' off the list. this is impossible.

lol. i revisited gish/siamese dream last night and the positions of certain songs in my ballot fluctuated wildly ("hummer": it's actually perfect), this is v hard

yeah no ballot is complete w/out "hummer" imo

My list seems to be angling strongly towards softer tracks and epics so far. Not so many heavy songs.

same

yeah no ballot is complete w/out "hummer" imo

Made some hard cuts last night based on studio vs. live versions. One of them, I can’t believe it’s not on my ballot but there’s just too many.

i just realized that only 4 songs in my list were released as singles.

My list seems to be angling strongly towards softer tracks and epics so far. Not so many heavy songs.

b-b-but Hello Kitty Kat!!!