By Mark T.R. Donohue
(U-WIRE) BERKELEY, Calif. -- The Billy Pumpkins continue not to surprise,
interest, or engage me whatsoever with their latest listless slab of noisy
noise, boring slowdowns, and some of the worst lyrics written since Nazareth
in their heyday. I had a little tiny bit of hope for MACHINA, I admit; I
almost kind of wanted to like it. I had gained a little respect for Corgan
as an artist (if still not as a musician) when he released the truly lousy,
but differently lousy Adore. But, alas, MACHINA/The Machines of God sounds
like a bald-faced attempt to repeat the Pumpkins' past successes with little
understanding of what made them good in the first place. Listening to
MACHINA's first few tracks, you can almost see the cover letter Billy
included when he sent the master tapes to Virgin:
"Hi, everybody. It's me, Billy Corgan. I know we're not on the best of terms
after that last record, but I swear, it wasn't my fault. It's the last time
I let that wanker Iha have any creative input, believe you me. So anyway,
here's my new record. I haven't settled on a title yet -- I was thinking
MACHINA, all capital letters, or maybe just The Machines Of God, but I don't
think either of those is pretentious enough. Could you forward a copy of
this to Design so we can get started on creepy packaging? Maybe something
with a wood finish, I don't know. Looked kind of cool in the sleeve notes to
R.E.M.'s Out Of Time.
"Anyway, I've tried real hard to correct all of the mistakes I made on that
last record. I think you'll find the first song on this new one, 'The
Everlasting Gaze,' will erase all unpleasant memories of Adore. Remember
that song 'Zero?' The one that sold all those T-shirts? This one sounds just
like it! Right down to the part where the (looped) loud guitar riff stops
and I whine all by myself for a few seconds. The kids will EAT IT UP.
Forward this to Merch so we can look at getting some shirts printed up.
"I think the first single should be 'Stand Inside Your Love.' It's got a
cool, sort of Siamese Dream feel to it, except I put fewer guitar chords in
it because I know the fans like to play along at home. It's like Boston
meets My Bloody Valentine. The kids will love it. Forward this to Legal so
we can make sure the Beatles' people don't get us for stealing their song
title. Oh, and just so you know, I also stole a whole bunch of ideas from
Elvis Costello on 'I Of The Mourning' -- but isn't he dead anyway? Whatever!
"I know you guys asked me not to lean so heavy on the drum machine this time
around, but when Jimmy first showed up at the sessions he was kind of wobbly
and it couldn't be avoided. Anyway, I put lots of distortion on the guitars
on 'Raindrops And Sunshowers' and 'The Sacred And Profane' so hopefully
people won't notice their melodic similarity to '1979' and 'Eye'
respectively. I mean, with all these photo shoots, it's hard for a guy to
find time to come up with new tunes, you know? No matter. By the way, could
you forward this to Product Tie-Ins so we could see about getting me a few
new endorsements? All the money I spent on synthesizers has hit ol' Billy
kind of hard, and I still haven't finished paying back the advance for
Adore....
"Anyway, cash worries ought to all go away pretty soon. This is a great
record, and it's going to make GREAT videos! 'With Every Light' is this
ballad thing that's going to make people think 'Tonight, Tonight' was just a
B-side. Forward this to Video Promotion so we can start looking at lists of
directors."
On the plus side, once you can get past the fact that you've heard all of
this before, MACHINA is one of the Pumpkins' better-crafted albums. There's
nowhere near the amount of filler that went on to Mellon Collie (which
seemed to have an EP's worth of considered material surrounded by two discs
of what sounded like demos), and there's nothing as outright unlistenable as
Adore at its most arty-awful. I rather expect Smashing Pumpkins fans will
accept this as a "smashing" return to form; and in a way, they'll be right.
The Pumpkins' form always was taking whatever was best about other bands'
sounds and recycling it in the crassest way possible. The weird thing is now
they've been around long enough that the songs they're recycling are their
own.
(C) 2000 Daily Californian via U-WIRE
Daily Californian
U. California-Berkeley
