This is why I'm hot · 261 days ago
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Lucrezia · 274 days ago
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Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist · 317 days ago
So, seven years later, I’m sitting here with the new Smashing Pumpkins record in my hand. Not really sure how I feel about this, to be honest. Personally, I never though the band should “reunite,” much less record an entire new album (even if this is only two of the original Pumpkins…more on that later). But, it’s here, and being a fan, I bought it, and listened to it (I bought the TARGET® edition, the one with “Zeitgeist” – I just bought this one version, not all Ï€ of them, which is what separates me from the drones, I suppose). So as the Pumpkins story begins another chapter, the least I could do was say a few words about the band that’s meant so much to me over the years.
I’ve got a lot of history attached to this band. “1979” was the first music video I ever saw, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “I Of The Mourning” were among the most glaring mis-tagged .mp3 files I had back in the days of Napster (“Rat In A Cage” and “Radio,” respectively) and D’Arcy Wretzky was one of my earliest celebrity crushes. So it’s with a bit of trepidation that I went into this album, not knowing whether or not to just love it outright (as if), to hate it (I’m not that jaded) or to wind up feeling somewhere in the middle. The end result is the one I knew it was probably going to be all along, and it’s that I’ve some mixed feelings.
If you’re holding a copy of Zeitgeist in your hands, the very first thing you’ll notice is that the name of the band is written as “Smashing Pumpkins” – not a ‘the’ in sight. This is the way I’ve always referred to the band, as they didn’t wind up tacking the article on until Mellon Collie and beyond. So, is this an indication of a return to form, or just done because the words fit around Lady Liberty’s torch better that way? In all honesty, it might be the latter, because Zeitgeist is an amalgamation of different Pumpkins sounds. There’s some grandiosity, some subdued numbers, some stuff in between. Maybe Billy went back and said “Hey, I liked this, let’s do it again but sort of different.” Previous Pumpkins albums, for better or for worse, were pretty easy to tell apart. Some people liked the new sounds on each album, some didn’t. But really, while you could tell that you were listening to a Smashing Pumpkins album, you could also probably say which one. Zeitgeist is the first one that doesn’t so much have it’s own solid identity as it has a bunch of other identities bouncing around inside of it. Still, though, this isn’t entirely a bad thing. They may be retreading old ground, but it’s ground I haven’t really been over in seven years, so I can deal with that. I didn’t really go into this album with any expectations, so when I hear good songs that sound like old good songs, that’s a good thing . But when I hear not-so-goot songs that sound like failed attempts at recreating old good songs, that’s not-so-good. When it works (“Bring the Light,” “Tarantula”), it’s fine, but when it doesn’t (“Neverlost”), you know it doesn’t.
Zeitgeist, for all of its familiar sonic ground, does break some new thematic ground. Most previous Pumpkins releases were about turning something personal into something big and flashy – taking the intimate, and sewing it on your sleeve while simultaneously yelling it at the top of your lungs (or, alternatively, singing it quietly, depending on desired effect). This is more or less the first time that the Billy looks outside of himself, rather than talking about how the world makes him feel (“Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “The End is the Beginning is the End”), he’s just talking about the world (specifically, America) at large (the aptly named “United States”). Billy is still pretty pissed off about things, but instead of simply whining and bitching about it, he’s throwing it back in the faces of those with whom he takes issue.
And he’s taking issue with quite a few people – the first thing you see when you open the album booklet is Paris Hilton. I’m not kidding – it’s a picture of Paris Hilton chatting on a cell phone, standing in front of a picture of a mushroom cloud. (It’s similar to the cover for the “Tarantula” single, found here). Flipping through the pages, we get strippers/porn stars digging their nails into their chests, little kids in ties saluting, body builders making freakish faces, and the Grim Reaper pointing from what looks to be the White House press conference pulpit. Of course, this really wouldn’t be a Pumpkins album without some melodrama, so they throw in a picture of a bass guitar with the SP Heart logo in an open casket on the next page for good measure. After that, we get to the lyrics, which are presented out of order, seemingly placed at random on what’s made to look like static filled TVs. The whole thing comes off as kind of kitschy, kind of lame, but it’s a drastic departure from the stuff that graced the pages of Mellon Collie’s booklet. Mellon Collie featured lyrics written in a cursive scripts, pictures of anthropomorphized animals doing things like smoking hookahs, all of that radiated the idea of coming from within – from inside a fucked-up headspace, some Lewis Carroll nightmare, but still – the idea of intimacy is there – it’s something personal. Zeitgeist cobbles together its images from all sorts of sources, like a patchwork quilt of shitty things in American society, and it broadcasts its written word on TV screens, ready for consumption by a rapt audience. The new, extroverted take on things is definitely different, but at the same time…when Billy croons “Revolution! Revolution! What will they do to me?” I can’t help but thinking that Green Day’s comebacker was called American Idiot, and they pretty much bitched about the same shit. It’s an interesting departure, and to be perfectly honest, some might view it as cheesy, and it probably is, but I like it a lot more this time around.
Speaking of presentation – Billy lists himself in the credits as “William Patrick Corgan,” which, as far as I can tell, is the first time he’s ever used his full name in a professional setting. Previously, he just went by Billy, he released his book of poetry (Blinking With Fists) under that name, and he recorded and released a solo album (2005’s TheFutureEmbrace) as Billy Corgan. But here he’s using his full name, yet another departure. But again, in keeping with the theme of departures that still don’t really blaze any dramatically new paths, William is the same as Billy, so even if he’s choosing to represent himself as somebody else, which is itself significant, he is still the same man. And as long as we’re talking about the credits on this thing, I’ve already been over half of them. The only other person listed is Jimmy Chamberlain. As a matter of fact, I’m just going to print this word for word: “songs by WILLIAM PATRICK CORGAN performed artfully by JIMMY CHAMBERLAIN: DRUMS / BILLY CORGAN: ALL THE REST.” (Interestingly enough, he stills goes by Billy for the “playing” credits, just not the writing ones – again, the music sounds pretty similar, so he might as well use Billy for the ‘performance’, but the writing is different, accounted for in the use of a new name). The fact that Billy and Jimmy are the only two guy who played on this isn’t really that surprising, because depending on who you ask, that’s all the Smashing Pumpkins ever really was for quite some time. But like the usage of “William,” I’m pretty sure this is the first time it’s ever been committed to print. Fear not though, Billy has managed to recruit the requisite female bassist (Ginger Reyes), and even if the new guitarist (Jeff Schroeder) isn’t as Asian as the old one, he did put a PhD on hold to do this, so give him some credit. (Why Melissa auf der Maur wasn’t a part of this, I don’t know. I know she always expressed interest in any future Pumpkins projects, and while I can definitely see Billy wanting total control in the studio, I’m curious as to why she didn’t appear in the touring band).
So after we’ve managed to look at the cover, flip through the pages of the lyrics book, and actually get to the album, as I said, it’s not bad. (Full disclaimer: I am biased to love this band, and even their less-acclaimed releases still hold a special place in my heart, and there’s not really anything they’ve ever done that I haven’t liked. Sometimes, this means forgiving or excusing things they do simply because of who they are, and critical and faux-journalistic integrity aside, I really don’t care too much about either of those to put aside my bias as much as I care about talking about a band that I love simply because I enjoy it and not because I’m writing for a paycheck or to please. So that being said, if you want to go get a bucket of salt to nibble at while reading over this next bit, I won’t blame you). I’m a big fan of their lead single, “Tarantula,” it screams of MACHINA era in-your-faceness like “The Everlasting Gaze” right down to the dropping out of all music for a few seconds near the end. It’s a pretty solid first single, I’m not sure anybody is going to be wowed by it, new fans or not, but regardless, I like it. “Doomsday Clock” is also good, save for sometimes awkward vocal delivery (and I’m not referring to the mixing). After a couple listens, my favorite track is probably “Bring the Light,” which recalls stuff like “Age of Innocence” (that being one of my favorite songs, that’s pretty high praise, though the similarities might be all in my mind). It has some pretty great dynamics, lyrics that are old-style Corgan well-adapted to the new regime. Everything isn’t all Raindrops + Sunshowers, though, as there are a couple clunkers here. “United States” comes across like an overly ambitious attempt to recreate the long-song epics from the Siamese Dream era, and it winds up being too top-heavy to stand on its own most of the time. I’m hoping they don’t totally cop Green Day and release it as an uncut single, because the middle part of the song over the airwaves would prove to be too much, I think. Other missteps include the somewhat boring “Neverlost,” which, aside from sounding like Justin Timberlake might name a song, apes the vibe from “1979” without actually having any of the desolate charm. I guess sometimes you go over the same path so much and you wear the ground so deep that you can’t see over the sides anymore, and it sounds like that’s what happened here. As it is, I haven’t listened to this album in depth enough to really analyze words or meaning or the way things fit, and so these are just a couple cursory observations. Oh, yeah, ”(Come On) Let’s Go!” is a fucking terrible name for a song.
And so here we are, seven years later, and (possibly) seven years wiser. What’s it left us with? Zeitgeist. Is it an instant classic? No, not by a long shot. There’s nothing here that is going to make the critics bend over backwards and wonder why the Pumpkins ever called it quits in the first place. It’s not as if this was the ace-up-the-sleeve the Pumpkins always had but never released. But then again, it’s not as if this is the worst record that’s going to be released this year. It’s pretty middle of the road, all things considered. If this album is a bridge between different sounds, a bridge of new and old ideas, a bridge from 2000 to 2007, then it’s a bridge in more ways than one. It rests exactly in the middle of the river, equidistant from each opposite bank. If the band sticks around for more than just a t-shirt selling reunion tour to record another followup, they could go either way with it. Forward across the rest of the bridge, or back to the shore they came from.
Given all this, it makes me wonder who this record was written for. As I was getting at before, the sheer amount of familiarity isn’t going to win over any critics, and it’s because of this fact (the fact that it sounds like the Pumpkins) that I’m unsure that they’re going to find a whole new cache of fans in the current musical landscape, in all honesty. So was it written for the old fans? Maybe, but truthfully, as one of them, I never wanted a new album, so if it was written for the likes of me, I can’t identify with it. Now that it’s here, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because having one of my favorite bands back together does make me smile, in spite of my cynicism. And so, with all this in mind, I’m coming to the conclusion that, like a lot of other Pumpkins releases, this was written for the Smashing Pumpkins. If that means it was written by Billy for Billy, then so be it. The Pumpkins were never content with being out of the spotlight, and so if this is Billy’s bid to jump right back in, color me unsurprised, but color me curious regardless. Thus, if what Billy said in the Chicago Tribune is true, that he really just wanted his band back, the part of his life he left in 2000, then I can’t fault him for it. Maybe some will find fault with the way he did it, but Billy Corgan is no stranger to criticism. And, if it bothered him that much, he wouldn’t have gone and done this in the first place. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Comment [2]
then again, maybe i won't · 325 days ago
naw
RABBIT RABBIT · 357 days ago
RABBIT RABBIT