Smashing Pumpkins - Machina: The Machines of God
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Free Music Notes for Machina: The Machines of God
Free Music Review: Sadly under-rated, sadly forgotten.
Hit: 5 Stars
There must be something about The Smashing Pumpkins that screams 'HATE ME' to so many people. I haven't picked up on what it is.. But it seems that, in their later years, the Smashing Pumpkins could do nothing right. Mellon Collie, an album of indescribable depth, scope and mastery, was cringed at simply because it wasn't 'like Siamese Dream'. Skip to 1998, Billy takes a new direction, introduces electronics into the music..oh, but no, 'how dare they be anything but snarling alternative rock. How dare they change!'And now, to Machina. It's an album despised by so many because it apparently relies too much on older techniques; Billy is supposedly lazily dependent on the 'same hooks' that made such hits as Zero and Bullet With.. the classics that they are. It seems to me that whether Billy took a new approach to songwriting, or whether he gave people exactly what they should have wanted, he was ignored, he was hated, dismissed, criticised, forgotten about. No other album matched this in 2000, and it seems that it is the only one without any attention.
Those who criticise Machina because it sounds too much like earlier albums clearly have not listened deeply to the music and the lyrics, have not read the story behind the album, and have not been moved in any way by the incredible beauty of the music. To me, Corgan's songwriting came full circle on this album. After years of changing from heavy to soft and back again, Machina marked the perfect balance. It is an album that resembles Mellon Collie and Adore equally, but there is something more about it; the 'lazy reliance on old methods' is not a lazy reliance at all! True, elements were taken from the past, but they were blended with the present, mixed perfectly. The result is breathtaking. Listen to Raindrops + Sunshowers, Age of Innocence, Wound, Stand Inside Your Love, I Of The Mourning... if you are not moved by any of these songs, and if you can STILL sit there with objectivity and dismiss the band as 'a has-been' after Billy delivers his most captivating vocal delivery and stunning lyric on 'Wound', then you are either a very cold human being, or a piece of plastic.
It is such a tragedy that this album is either totally ignored or brutally criticised. But perhaps the REAL tragedy is that Billy perhaps listened to this criticism and.. *ahem* formed that thing of a band (Zwan) a couple of years later. This is the peak of Billy's songwriting gift, released at the lowest point in popular music. In 2000, people must have either jealous of Billy's mastery, or dulled to bricks by the other music released at the time. There can be no other reason for Machina's descent into oblivion.
Sad.
Classic.
Free Music Review: MACHINA/The Machines of God (a modern fable)
Hit: 5 Stars
"Let me Die, for rock and Roll" croons Billy Corgan, the sometime genius and rock-and-roller in "Heavy Metal Machine", one of the more notable tracks on "MACHINA/The Machines of God", the last new commercially available album from the Smashing Pumpkins, a band whose career has had highs and lows, but always seems to pick themselves up again. This is truly the pumpkins at their greatest. While melancholic hymns like "Try Try Try" and "Blue Skies Bring Tears" are trademark Pumpkins material this time around Billy Corgan takes an entirely new approach. "The everlasting Gaze", the opener to this 74-minute epic, is awash with heavy guitars and distorted synthesizers, and comes on wuite harsh. The catchy hooks and flowing chorus provide the perfect balance, which sometimes makes you cringe in that wonderful way.Drum-Driven ballads like "Raindrops and sunshowers" "with every light" and the afore-mentioned "Try Try Try" become a welcome rest in between the louder sections on this album, without going too soft or losing their edge.
The nearly ten-minute centerpice, "Glass and the Ghost Children", tells part of a haunting story which Billy himself wrote and based his album around.
The album is not without its weaknesses, however.
After the first 4 minutes of the track, you might wish "Heavy Metal Machine", a grinding, stomping power-anthem would just finish.
"The crying tree of mercury" with it's droning vocals and wonky guitars is vaguely reminiscent of "shame" from the pumpkins previous album, an electro-rock masterpiece called "Adore"
These weak spots are few and far between, and for the most part, MACHINA is truly an astounding piece of Musical Art, complete with radio-ready hits like "Stand inside your Love" and "The Everlasting Gaze" but all the while not losing it's significance and emotional depth on tracks like "with every light" and "Wound".
The casual listener may be tempted to give up after the first listen to this one, but after winding your way through the intricacies and extremely complex pathways which are abundant on MACHINA, it's fair to say that this album will open your mind up to a vastly different type of music than what you'll hear on the radio these days.
Whether Mr. Corgan was trying to stretch the boundaries of modern music even more, opening up new ideas to listeners, or just make a really great rock and roll album, he inadvertently succeeded in doing both quite well.
Free Music Review: Let me die for Rock n' Roll...
Hit: 5 Stars
Words cannot express how long I have been waiting to review this monster of an album. To sum it all up in a few words, "The Smashing Pumpkins are ahead of their time." And that's exactly what makes them so good. I shall give you a review of every single song, with a rating on a scale of 1 to 10. The first song, "The Everlasting Gaze," is just like "Ava Adore" from Adore. It's more of a return to their old roots than most of the other songs. It was a rather good choice for their first single (9.4). The second, "Raindrops + Sunshowers," just blew me away when I first heard it. This was different from the SP I knew. It was lyrical beauty, simple as that (9.8). Then came along "Stand Inside Your Love." All I can say is wow. This one was even better than "R+S." (10). When I first heard "I of the Mourning," I didn't care much for its repetetive lyrics, but the ending of the song was its true saving grace. "What is it you want to change?" (8.7). Then came, "The Sacred and Profane." I can't remember ever hearing Billy Corgan's scratchy, whiny voice fit a song so well. It was sheer wonder (9.4). "Try, Try, Try" was definitely a song I didn't care for at first, but it grew on me (7.9). "Heavy Metal Machine" is quite possibly the best song on the album, with its lyrical superiority to all the other songs on the album (10). "This Time" was a very good song, but very forgettable also (7.8). "The Imploding Voice" was even more repetative than "I of the Mourning," but I found the beat to be quite good. Then came along THE BEST song on the album. "Glass and the Ghost Children" is so beautiful, I can't explain it. It delves into SP's music and then writes itself into Billy's own belief in what god is and where his music comes from. "As she counted the spiders as they crawled up inside her" (off the scale). "Wound" is average at best (7.6), while "The Crying Tree of Mercury" developes into something that the Pumpkins had never ventured into before (8.3). "With Every Light" is a beautiful song, and that's about it (9.3). Then we reach "Blue Skies Bring Tears" which is a song that is rather annoying, but good even still (6.9). Finally, we come to the closing, "Age of Innocence," which is another wonderful song so good it's hard to explain (10).
That's about it for my little critique. In other words, buy this album. You won't regret it.
Free Music Review: Blinded by the brilliance of the ever evolving machine.
Hit: 5 Stars
Okay, so this is it, the final commercial release from Chicago's Smashing Pumpkins. Many people expected the band to perform a u-turn after their phenomonally beautiful but commercially less successful album Adore. They expected them to make 'Siamese dream mark 2' that, though is not what the Pumpkins are about. Even at the band's commercial apex and at a time when they were considered a 'Rocking' band they never repeated themselves: Siamese dream was a warmer more epic experience than Gish whilst Mellon Collie was the brutally honest opus that cemented Billy Corgan's title as King of the alternative. Then came Adore, the most effortlessy ethereal album i have ever heard, to some that was the end... Enter 'Machina the Machines of God' with it's all encompassing stance on the Pumpkin's sound. the opening track 'The Everlasting Gaze' is so quintessentially Pumpkins yet maintains the band's modus operandi of constant evolution. The Chunky opening riff is powerful in itself but could have come from a number of bands. It's the song's chorus that propells it to the status of a great, great rock song. The subtle melody, orchestal guitars and Chamberlin's massive drums give the impression that the song has adopted wings and is now mid orbit on its way to the Sun. The next rack 'Raindrops and Sunshowers' relies on corgan's ability to write an infectous melody. It builds and builds until the sound becomes so rich and laden with effects that it becomes apparent that Corgan has discovered that crashing guitars and soaring drums are not the only way to create a monolithic wall of sound. 'Stand Inside Your Love' follows with its chunky semi-distorted arpeggiation and Corgan's beautifully cracked vocals over the top until it exlodes into a blaze of euphoric emotion and distorted guitars for the chorus. This song is as close to a regular rock song as Corgan will ever write yet it is still totally inimitable. Other stand out tracks on the album include the chugging, spiralling 'Wound', 'I of the Mourning' (Possibly the albums most emotionally potent song), and the nine minute tour de force, 'Glass and the Ghost Children' which runs the gamut of emotions, from fear to love, to hate and acceptance. It is this last word that probably relates most to the Pumpkin's current situation because I fear that, to the disadvantage of music in general, they will never be accepted by today's sterile and frankly dumbed-down music market. I suppose all good things have to come to an end.Free Music Review: The Machines Revisited
Hit: 5 Stars
About two years ago (2009), a 15-year-old me bought this album, listened to it a few times, decided it was an over-produced,bland,confusing mess and left it to collect dust. Then a few days ago I popped it in and listened to it again. I am very, very pleased to admit that I was very, very wrong.
"MACHINA: The Machines of God" is a monster of an album. While previous outings were certainly grandiose, "MACHINA" takes the Pumpkin sound into a new, strange dimension. The songs still possess the Pumpkins' tademark melancholy, but this time around there's less focus on the univeral themes of depression and anger. Instead, Billy Corgan decided to write songs that came straight out of his experience as the leader of one of the biggest bands in the world. If there's any album I could compare it to, it would be Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Think about it. Both Billy and Roger Waters were brilliant songwriters at the helm of immensely successful bands. They were also both what you could call control freaks who didn't enjoy being contradicted. And of course, both albums were made right as the band was beginning to fall apart.
You probably know that. I suppose I should be talking more about MACNINA's sound, which seems to be the source of its controversy. The sound is very hard to describe, especially when your mother is on the other side of the room watching "The Dark Knight" when you're trying to find the right words for something so unusual. I gained an interesting new perspective on it just the other day when I was listening to "The Sacred and Profane" on Youtube. A user gushed that it was her favorite Shoegaze song. It seemed odd at first, but then I realized that she was right. The song's many walls of overdubs and feedback formed a massive soundscape curiously similar to something My Bloody Valentine could have done.
This Shoegazer element, combined with big choruses and expensive-sounding production, is what what gives "MACHINA" its haunting sound. There's nothing like it it anywhere in the world of Alt. Rock. Buy it and listen to it very closely. The reason I thought the songs were so bland in the first place was that I was taking them only at face value, much like people who complain that the music of Pink Floyd is boring.
Think of this review as evidence of a listener who once disimissed "MACHINA" as SP's worst album and later came to realize that it was actually excellent, like a lot of people who bought it in 2000.