Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness
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Free Music Notes for Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness
Free Music Review: Best album ever?
Hit: 5 Stars
This album is easily the best of the 90's (although Nevermind competes with it). It is phenomenal. When I first heard it, I thought only about half the songs were good. Now the album has grown on me and I can only think of one that should be scrapped (Tales of a Scorched Earth).I do think that this is the best album ever. My choice usually alternates between this and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. Sgt. Pepper has a lot to offer, but some tracks are almost ordinary (Lovely Rita). Abbey Road is another contender, but its high points nearly aren't as high as Mellon Collie. As of now I haven't delved that deep into Dylan so I couldn't really make a clear judgement on him. His Highway 61 Revisited blew me away but is still a bit inferior of Mellon Collie. I don't have any other of his albums. The last major contenders are the Beach Boys. Pet Sounds is hard to argue with and may even be technically better than Mellon Collie, but my heart isn't as deep into it. Smile, the Beach Boys' unrealeased psychedelic album, is a lot like Mellon Collie. It is grand, sweeping, experimental, and fascinating. It is also far better harmonically and melodically, but its experimentation doesn't show up with the results the Mellon Collie has. As for other greats like Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, they don't come at all close.
Finally, here is the case for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness:
Billy Corgan has created a sweeping, atmospheric work that runs into, at some point, almost every emotion klnown to man. Yes, there are some bad or just plain weird songs, but they are right in step with the spirit of the album. This is an album to be explored forever, to mature with.
I don't want to enumerate the virtues of every song, but I would just suggest: BUY THE ALBUM! You won't regret it; just give it a chance. Bullet with Butterfly Wings is the best song and an accessible one. In terms of other SP albums, Siamese Dream is excellent and you might even want to start it with it first. Nevertheless, I started out with MCIS and am glad I did. Gish is a good album too; not on the same level as the others, but good. Adore was panned by both the critics and the fans, but it is actually better than any other SP album aside from MCIS. Machina is not as good as SD or Adore, but it is superb nevertheless.
The bottomline is that Mellon Collie is the greatest album of the Smashing Pumpkins, possibly ever.
Free Music Review: Best album ever?
Hit: 5 Stars
This album is easily the best of the 90's (although Nevermind competes with it). It is phenomenal. When I first heard it, I thought only about half the songs were good. Now the album has grown on me and I can only think of one that should be scrapped (Tales of a Scorched Earth).I do think that this is the best album ever. My choice usually alternates between this and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. Sgt. Pepper has a lot to offer, but some tracks are almost ordinary (Lovely Rita). Abbey Road is another contender, but its high points nearly aren't as high as Mellon Collie. As of now I haven't delved that deep into Dylan so I couldn't really make a clear judgement on him. His Highway 61 Revisited blew me away but is still a bit inferior of Mellon Collie. I don't have any other of his albums. The last major contenders are the Beach Boys. Pet Sounds is hard to argue with and may even be technically better than Mellon Collie, but my heart isn't as deep into it. Smile, the Beach Boys' unrealeased psychedelic album, is a lot like Mellon Collie. It is grand, sweeping, experimental, and fascinating. It is also far better harmonically and melodically, but its experimentation doesn't show up with the results the Mellon Collie has. As for other greats like Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, they don't come at all close.
Finally, here is the case for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness:
Billy Corgan has created a sweeping, atmospheric work that runs into, at some point, almost every emotion klnown to man. Yes, there are some bad or just plain weird songs, but they are right in step with the spirit of the album. This is an album to be explored forever, to mature with.
I don't want to enumerate the virtues of every song, but I would just suggest: BUY THE ALBUM! You won't regret it; just give it a chance. Bullet with Butterfly Wings is the best song and an accessible one. In terms of other SP albums, Siamese Dream is excellent and you might even want to start it with it first. Nevertheless, I started out with MCIS and am glad I did. Gish is a good album too; not on the same level as the others, but good. Adore was panned by both the critics and the fans, but it is actually better than any other SP album aside from MCIS. Machina is not as good as SD or Adore, but it is superb nevertheless.
The bottomline is that Mellon Collie is the greatest album of the Smashing Pumpkins, possibly ever.
Free Music Review: Great Set!
Hit: 5 Stars
When an artist releases a 2 CD set as an album, the album is usually filled with album filler, and basically all the good songs could have been placed on one CD. However, with MELLON COLLIE, the Smashing Pumpkins have created a set that is exciting for the listener, and will provide many repeated playbacks. All the songs here are excellent.For all the criticisms levied on head Pumpkin Billy Corgan, one thing he can't be accused of is being narrow in his artistic vision. On the breakthrough SIAMESE DREAM, he and co-producer Butch Vig built a landscape of layered, corrosive guitars that shimmeredbrighter with each additional glance. On MELLON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS, Corgan turns his eye to the dreariness of modern existence and comes up with a broad alterna-rock opus that plays out like an offspring of Roger Waters and Kurt Cobain--verbose and angst-ridden, bleak in its view, cathartic in nature.
With its two distinctly titled song-cycles and overture-like title track, there is no doubt that MELLON COLLIE is meant to be approached as a concept album, and Corgan's lyrical musings only reiterate the point. The songs explore alienation in the physical and spiritual worlds, generally concluding that it can seldom be overcome. Only the early "Tonight, Tonight" offers a glimmer of hope ("believe that life can change, that you're not stuck in vain"), on the wings of a soaring, string-laden production. Far more constant are spiritually depleting images of "the world [as a] vampire, sent to drain" ("Bullet With Butterfly Wings"), of love as "suicide" ("Bodiesö") and of heaven's unresponsiveness ("Zero").
The constant din of guitars that illuminated GISH and SIAMESE DREAM has been replaced with a varied sonic palette that reflects MELLON COLLIE's operatic nature. Piano interludes connect the opening title track and the closing "Farewell And Goodnight"; harps, harpsichords and other heavenly sounds trim "Cupid De Locke"; synthetic, Cars-like drums and a general faux-New Wave feel spur on "1979"; and "X.Y.U." explodes with distorted guitar wallops and yelped vocals that scream post-modern confusion. The 28 tracks are as motley and disconcerting as the world they describe, and MELLON COLLIE is a dispiriting glimpse from the eyes of a man whose last vestiges of hope seem lost.
Free Music Review: Pumpkins pump up their emotional angst in Mellon Collie
Hit: 5 Stars
Although most Smashing Pumpkins fans think that "Siamese Dream" is the pinnacle of their work, their third album truly shot the Smashing Pumpkins over the top.
The double CD "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" is an amazingly innovative album showing off the angst and emotion of Generation X.
It deceptively begins with a soft piano piece named after the album name. Then, with the beautiful blur of an orchestra and loud guitars, Smashing Pumpkins blast off with the beautiful single "Tonight, Tonight." Corgan is a fleeting inspiration for teenagers when he sings "Believe, believe in me, believe/that life can change, that you're not stuck in vain."
It's true that the lyrical angst reaches a lame duck Bukowski level with excessively loud songs such as "Bullet With Butterfly Wings." Still, there's something undeniably edgy when Corgan yells in a whine, "Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage/Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved." And the intensely loud growl of the guitars is extremely exciting.
By the time the album reaches the song "F*** You (an ode to no one)," Corgan is going bonkers with the wail of his electric guitar. The album includes other more bizarre experiments in sound, such as the half-electronic, half-shoegazer-style-guitar song "Love," the angelic harp song "Cupid De Locke," long serene opening of "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" and the infamous psychedelic acoustic song "Thirty-Three." It's a ethereal double-cd of sonic magnificence, to say the least.
But it's incredibly catchy. "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" literally can suck anyone in with its beautiful acoustics in some songs and frighteningly loud guitars in others. Of course, I almost forgot to mention the infamously cool acoustic song "1979," in which Corgan reflects on old memories before singing that "we don't know/just where our bones will rest/to dust I guess/forgotten and absorbed into the earth below."
As unusual as the album gets with weird dulcimer sounds in "We Only Come Out At Night," it is one of the most eclectic albums of the 90s, with more spunk than even Pearl Jam would show off in "Vitalogy." Anyone looking for a grunge album drenched in the acoustic of gorgeous fantasy world of Lewis Carroll will definitely love "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness."
Free Music Review: One of the All Time Great Rock Albums of the 90s'
Hit: 5 Stars
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is a unique album due to its wide expansion of musical genres. It flows slowly form the beginning until you hit the song "Jellybelly" which turns the album into a swirling melodic work of art with its twisting guitar notes. Mellon Collie satisfies all your tastes for music. The orchestra of symphony in the song "Tonight, Tonight" proves that Billy Corgan is not only a master at songwriting and the guitar, but at performing songs that lead totally away from the rock world, and still count as rock. Not only a c.d. for all tastes of music, but also in a small way, you can count Mellon Collie in as a tribute c.d. that not only honors teenage angst and pain, but to the band Queen. The song "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" is a 9:21 opus of soft melody combined with the rifts of James Iha and his guitar to commemorate the band in a way. The first c.d. not only houses soft, lullabye songs such as "Tonight, Tonight" and "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" but loud, in- your- ear guitar playing songs that travel from the depths of "Zero", and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", to the heights of "Love", and "Muzzle". In a way, the entire c.d. seems to find ways to mold the heavy, angstful guitar notes into a brighter, happier tone which is a success in this c.d. The second c.d. in this double set entitled "Twilight to Starlight" definitely delivers the heavy, poetic guitar playing, as the first c.d. does. The c.d. starts, with slow, rythmic guitar, and floods over its banks in the songs "Bodies", "Tales of a Scorched Earth", and "XYU" creating a metallic masterpiece. Again, the spectrum of all music is filled within this "Part 2" section of Mellon Collie. With songs such as "Thirty Three", "1979", and "Beautiful", the spectrum is filled by songs loaded with love, sadness, and in some brief moments, originality. So, to wrap up this review, let me say this; Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is one of those rare gems of a rock c.d. that is worth its weight in gold. Any music fan who has not picked up this wonder, needs to, so they can take the journey through a c.d. that never lets up, and always delivers what you want.