4/5
Twenty-Twenty and the Infinite Sadness.
Zeroes! Wanna go for a ride? Halloween may be over like Thanksgiving in the fall of the most tragic year, but the Pumpkins are back with spice, ready to smash mouths like lattes this season at Starbucks. All with the 'CYR' of some album artwork you'd kind of find in New York's Rockefeller building with a striking God like figure in all its promethean, muscular glow looking like Dr. Manhattan himself. The same blue man group hero their 'The End Is The Beginning Is The End' classic track epically introduced in the trailer for Zack Snyder's 2009 'Watchmen' graphic novel of a movie after the 'Batman and Robin' soundtrack song deserved to score better. The Smashing Pumpkins aren't the type of band that need to spread one track thin over two movies though. They have more hits than the page that checks the cases this year. With more line-ups then LeBron James and the Californian champion, Los Angeles Lakers. But here's 3 of 4 D'Arcy. Even if it has felt like '1979' since their last album. It hasn't. It just everything feels 30 years ago, quarantined in lockdown right now. Think of this new album 'CYR' as a companion piece to the 2018 Rick Rubin produced tenth album, 'Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun.' With its similar strokes of artwork, coming after 2012's outstanding 'Oceania' and the 2014 momumental 'Monuments To An Elegy'. Their last Hollywood heavy metal album being the 2007 idea of the Statue of Liberty and Paris Hilton covering, 'Zeitgeist' which even had greatest hit single worthy b-sides ('Death From Above') to their 'That's The Way (My Love Goes)' and 'Bleeding The Orchid' super singles. Back when histories spirit and mood was a little brighter and not actually that conspiratory...well, not like it is now anyway. Lady Liberty now 'Cloverfield' green (that was my choice of album colour shade) looking like something out of Kurt Russell's 'Escape From New York' this Christmas chronicle...or a Paris reality show. And let's not forget their biggest records off some of their signature sets 'Today'. Like the 'Quiet', 'Soma', 'Rocket' 'Disarm' off a iconic 'Siamese Dream'. To 'Tonight, Tonight', 'Jellybelly', 'Here Is No Why', 'Bullet With Butterfly Wings', 'To Forgive', 'Love', 'Muzzle', 'Bodies', 'Thirty-Three', 'In The Arms Of Sleep', 'We Only Come Out At Night', 'Beautiful', 'By Starlight' everything off the 'Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness' double disc classic that plays like a greatest hits from dawn to dusk and twilight to starlight. The only album in had back in those Sony Discman college CD changing (disc two was my other choice) days...and the only one I needed. Not the only Smashing Pumpkins album, but the ONLY album I had. Welcome to life before Spotify streaming and cherry picking kids! Now I'm talking to my generation in baggy blue jeans and chains nostalgia...feel old yet? And how about the 'Widow Wake My Mind', star 'Spangled', 'Astral Planes' of the 'Teargarden By Kaleidyscope' web series they gave their fans for f###### free like a Timbaland Thursday or Kanye G.O.O.D. Friday (remember that time?) when fans fickly said they were done? Now with 21 tracks as atmospherically neon smooth as 'TheFutureEmbrace' of a criminally underrated Billy Corgan solo album for your 1 hour and 12 minutes. So much so 10 of these albums tracks came as singles before last weeks release. That's what happens when you whittle the track list down from an epic 35 count (we'd have taken all of them) as Jimmy Chamberlain says. When it comes to us and Smashing songs we 'Adore'. We shall never be apart.
Untouchable. You should still take this golden era band seriously in their Springsteen years, still able to write a 'Letter To You' under these 'Western Stars' this year and the last ones. Even if the same Corgan who once without taking his eyes off his mark, Capone threatened a stage bum rushing fan with violence, has been seen on the cover of dog magazines, smiling with puppies (amazing). Or if better than a classic 'Simpsons' joke, the internet took his "weeee don't even care" from '1979' and turned it into a roller-coaster reaction Vine, Tik Tok, or whatever the f### it's called, more hilarious than the one down with whatever those noises Lady Gaga made when she was close to the epic end of 'Shallow' from her 'A Star Is Born' Hollywood remake with Bradley Cooper. Far from done and quarantined from Rubin's Hollywood Hills production home, Corgan produces this one perfectly. Featuring soulful backing vocals for their middle of the night tones from touring members Sierra Swan and Katie Cole that gives this synth pop, prog rock a 70's feel to the future. Now how about those top ten tracks? Released back-to-back, taking it back to those B-Side nostalgic days, but still mostly serving double A's like Duracell. This band will never Energizer bunny run out of records now. Like the title track and 'The Colour Of Love', kaleidoscope bright as the wheel turns and Corgan sings, "whomever wants you alone/whomever wants you atones/it's with this prayer I've sewn/whomever wants you alone," about this, "vast amount of the time slipped away." This and the storytelling 'Ashes' of 'Confessions Of A Dopamine Addict' came with the 'In Ashes' animated short that served as more than music videos, but more Hollywood for their lyrical screenplays. This all came to a pre-COVID, next third episode of 'Ashes' and the double single release of 'Anno Satana' and 'Birch Grove'. All before the flowers for 'Ramona' and the Friday the 13th, lucky for some fans special edition video of 'Wyttch' that furnished the Pumkins' Halloween like Carpenter. Then came the 'Purple Blood' like the Lakers King and the 'Dulcet In E' as Corgan gets classically compelling with his couplets, “from a tree swings an apple/a pear or a candle/and once caught/Captive of your love.” Heavy metal poetry.
Rhyming on 'Starrcraft' and then 'Save Your Tears', Billy let's the pain rain from ducts like aqua as he says, "swoon/Swoon in spirals phased/Swoon in chorused grays/Won't you go?/Won't you freeze?/Please although/You're asked to still/Swoon in somber haze/Swoon by haste," in a new classic chorus. But then how about the chorus of 'Telegenix', taking mental health to task as we all work on ourselves, trapped with out demons at home, scratching the door like a monster under the bed as we sleep? "Then I will bet on your life/From sodden vale and hell's divide/That wind says rain/As blossoms fell for live TV/The ghosts we slay come ours to reap/Upending what's land's end/If they say it's not suicide, then what is/At the bottom of a boot black sea?" If you thought you were drowning, adrift in this sea alone then think again. Here's a hand. Like the one he lends, leading you through the 'Black Forest, Black Hills' for the darkest year for mankind since the great depression or the black plague. Knowing somehow we will make it together. As long as we have the 'Adrennalyne' like this shot to the speakers, or more personal headphones. Echoing through these chambers to Chamberlain, nothing is as haunting as 'Haunted' this season, howling at the moon for a real thriller. This really could be chapter and verse in harrowing harmony as Corgan chimes, "Along the banks of rivers Zion/Sang a fallen and forsworn/The chain/Of human rage/And let between an ocean rain/And lambs so led, I stayed." But still they aren't done like, 'The Hidden Sun'. Then on 'Schaudenfreud' Corgan mentally takes apart anyone who drives pleasure from anothers misfortune with Sigmund Freud smarts. All before growling over guitar to the stripes of 'Tyger, Tyger' and the majestic, 'Minerva' closer. Ending on a high for us saints and feints marching in, singing, "So kinetic, electric waterloo/In vitro, in shadow Xanadu/Perfumed papers that say that we'll mend/Let's dance around again/Let's dance around again." Sometimes fools win...but not you Trump. Our carriage may have turned into a pumpkin this year, but once we rocked the vote it was record breaking smashing. And here's one Pumpkin that won't rot later when it's brought to your porch. Even if the world has gone to a heavy, Halloween horror, handbasket hell. At least we have the metal. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'The Colour Of Love', 'Confessions Of A Dopamine Addict', 'Minerva'.
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