Okay. I've wanted to do this for ages - describe MellonCollie and the infinite Sadness, an album that just keeps on giving. It's the album I know I can listen to for just over 2 hours and not get bored. It's my aeroplane music - long like the star wars trilogy - you aren't left wondering what happened next, and if you need more, it's long enough since you started it to just start again.
I started this on the plane to some destination last summer and filled 60 pages of my moleskin.... I finally got round to typing it into the computer when I was in Italy......So now theres 4000 words on Mellon Collie.... See what you think... Pick up the album.. enjoy... If anybody makes it to the end... please let me know...
So we start with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness itself - a lovely piano ditty. Hardly a Beethoven Sonata, but in some ways just as clever it builds slowly, adds some strings and then fades. It's the start of the day on the first side of MellonCollie - morning. It introduces all the little Motifs that Corgan is going to play with for the next 2 hours. It ends with a little cheeky high note. There's a little sadness in the melody, a little drama and a little fun - anything could happen from here. A song of hope and beauty, like the start of a day, you know there's going to be ups and downs, but we can't wait.
Now we start the album for real - tonight. The master of heavy crashing grunge guitars has started with grand piano, and now he's giving us crashing strings - he's a big boy now - compositional confidence and experimentation, the music is now beyond definition. We start our journey with a song about tonight, then he brings it down and the first line enters "time is never time at all" - what a way to start an album about the passing of the day. Once we make it to the chorus - this is damn good pop. I love the use of rolling drums along with heavy strings over the top of what is a deceptively heavy bass line
There's an acoustic version of the song on a B-side of the single. It is paired down to just one guitar - it lacks none of it's beauty which says so much about the song-writing. As good as Corgan is, he still needs to plead that we believe in him.
If in tonight, we've not even got out of bed. We're still looking forward to the day. With Track three - JellyBelly - we get out of bed in style. Vintage Pumpkins style, and it RAWKS!! I go on about it, but I love this wall of sound. Corgan does it like no other and the pop doesn't wain one iota.
"To make yourself feel better"
I always think this is a song for an ex-girlfriend. Bitter thoughts poison the start of the day making the emotion cocktail even more interesting.
And finish!! Making track 1 and 2 a distant memory, we head straight into Zero. Corgan has us exactly where he wants us, and he's keeping us there. I can't listen to the tick tock rhythm of this track without thinking of the drummer, Jimmy chamberlain's face staring at you in the video. He has a piercing menacing stare.
"She's the one for me"
Lamenting the past, or hoping for the future - who knows?
"Emptiness is loneliness and loneliness is cleanliness and cleanliness is godliness so god is empty"
I'm never sure how much of Billy Corgan is humour and how much is just strange. He does a BeeGees cover on his latest solo album, which could be because of his love and understanding of pop, or it could be humour, again, Who knows?
We're in and settled now and not one boring note. Corgan has set the pace. He's taken us from solo piano right up to noise guitar in 4 tracks, so he gets to play now.
Here is no why - track 4. With a very nice intro.
"The useless drag of another day"
We're up and about and we've already knocked out the frustration in our love lives. 0.40 and the first guitar crash from quiet that we've heard so far on the album. I want to raise my hands in the air and cheer, but I'm on a plane and it might look a bit suss. By 1.42 I'm pissed off - the euphoria which this track generates wants me to dance in the aisles. 2.25 and the first real Corgan solo of the album brings tears. I don't really know why, it just seems to tug and pull on your emotions which make the hair along your spine stand on end. I have to control myself....
Bullet with Butterfly wings is theatrical and dramatic genius, a phenomenally written riff which hands in every instrument including the rhythm of the voice - good quality rock music at it's best.
We're back to frustration in tick tocking through life - the riff and the lyrics("Can you fake it for one more show...") build this tension, this rage, that he seems to want to sit and put up with and do nothing about until 2:25 when he can go wild, climaxing at 3:25 with a scream which is still reverberating around the SECC in glasgow from when I saw them live.. You should have known by now that it was coming - the quiet before the storm........
To Forgive - A bass driven arpegiatted riff on about 40 scratchy overdriven guitars(.... that would even have Trent Reznor jealous) lamenting old regrets Even quiet and wistful, the guitars are loud to the the dying amp stage. "Hold back the fool....." Seconds ago he was holding back the rage. The drums punch slowly through the raw emotion:
"I forget to forgive... nothing is important"
It almost sounds hopeless; ending on a minor chord....
Track 8 - Fuck you and ode to no one...
Digga Digga Digga - I love it. Palm muted tension thumping out the speakers!!!
"I'll never be the shine in your spit" - a wonderful line.... he longs to "Disconnect, Disconnect", but for some reason can't.
0:35.... You knew it was coming, but he seems to do it with more class everytime, I swear you can see lightening bolts of adrenaline in Jimmy Chamberlain's eyes in the extra feature's of their DVD..
Rhythmic heavy metal of the soundgarden quality, Corgan wants us to throw it all away "Destroy the mind, Destroy the body, but you cannot destroy the soul"
The same theme as Bullet with Butterfly wings - "The disenchanted and the romantics" - Corgan's people. The drums hit you from all sides with fills, every note played like the song depends on it. When you think there is no more, the song builds and builds.....and then quiet....
"Lost my innocence to a no good girl" - I love how it's her fault..
3:25 and with every pass of the ascending chords, you are more fired up......
GEEEEE TAR - In a sea washing over your adrenaline filled body... punctuated with blasts of machine gun fire from Jimmy Chamberlain filling your body with the spirit and energy of smashing pumpkins until all you ca do is collapse in a sea of feedback.........
Love - track 9 - probably the meanest sounding so far - I'm sure corgan and reznor have to be related.... Tick... Tock....
"to my mistakes....."
Love? It's the raw horrible love when you are bitter that it can get so close and hurt so much. "it's who you wanted to be.." i.e. You wanted it - you got it....
The whole track has been post processed to sound broken.... The solo's just horrible. It scratches, making you feel uncomfortable... a niggling annoyance.
"When I lost my mind, I knew I was in for a good time" - It's a far stretch from the beatles' Love me do...
Slow death rattle of love....
Cupid De Locke - Track 10
Now.... The other side of love. We're back prancing through fields of flowers which in Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness time, must mean afternoon.
"Turpentine kisses" - I have no idea, we'll put it down to Psychedelia and hallucinogens - maybe it isn't that far a stretch from the beatles after all.
The orchestration is so dense - he doesn't need guitars to fill the aural spectrum, voices will do....
"Seek the unseekable"
I get chills now, cos I know Track 11(Galapagos) is coming. That beautiful delicate riff, which generally means there's a big crashing guitar which expectation doesn't diminish one bit.
"Ain't it funny how we pretend we're still a child" Funny cos we are pretending or funny cos it's a child...
1:00 and the chord progression sounds. Why is it so familiar? It's been in almost all the tracks in some form or another.
"I won't deny the pain" - I swallow a lump in my throat.... Not the deepest lyrical matter, but it seems to honest for some reason when coupled within this musical context.
After 5000 listens that chord progression has become such a good friends to me that it's good to see him again...
"Rescue me from me.."
Build.... chugg chugg.... and then back to our riff with so much ambient air, that I can float in it with my hair blowing in the wind...
"Hold me" 2:06 - there's fear in his voice...
2:20 - There's more momentum this time, we're going further...
3:00 - Quiet - so delicate you fear trying to hold onto it
3:30 - WOW!!!!!
"If we die right now...." We don;t care from here on in, we're at the peak, complete top of our game. It;s a downhill meander from here. I'm always sure that 3:30 "wow" can't be topped and that we've had the climax and all thats left to do is tie up the loose ends...
Track 12 - Muzzle - My favourite which replaced the previous favourite has been replaced.... I'm like a little kid... I forgot how goo this one was...
We're still at the top holding back tears of joy, we're plateauing at the top with a tick tick tock - we're sustaining it!!!
"All this will surely have to end... great loves will one day have to part" but we don't care, we're living for now. We've built strength from this even though we're parting.
"I knew exactly where it was" The drums build, we're so sure ad confident that we march onwards - approaching the end of day.....
Track 13 - we build an arpegiatted riff from silence. Its the sound of uncertainty and expectation, it builds by adding bits and pieces along the way as it picks up momentum... We're floating again... Corgan is spending over 2 minutes just putting us into a zone....
2:12 and what did you expect?? - Fun Loud Guitar....
2:40 and broken sound creeps through against a riff... we're losing one side to the strength of the new stuff coming through. Porcelina( I can only assume the crockery god) is watching over us..
"Giving me the power to be afraid" like self awareness requires confidence....
"without a care in this life" - with a riff like that - you have no cares....
we drift for a while on reverby feedback... this is the transitional period between day and night; expectation... brushing off those fears regrets and angers we spoke about so many tracks ago(actually four tracks, but it feels like a life time.)
Carefree we're getting ready to be night animals... ready to go into that zone where the night can last forever. For a while there will be no tomorrow, only a time plateau on which your evening hangs....
We float back out with a very dazed perma smile... the trials and tribulations may have left us crazy..
Track 14... Take me down....
A hot mug of cocoa for those heading off to bed, or an apprehensive little ditty about what the night is going to have in store for us..... who knows....
FROM DUSK TILL DAWN....
people of the night..... personified in Keef Richards.... bad people..... looks like we're pulling an all nighter....
Track 1 side 2 - Where boys fear to tread.. from now on we sort out the men from the boys, and from the onset, it's not for the faint hearted...
It's a shakey start, people join ins lowly, but before long, we are tick-tocking with menace... This makes Zero(Track 3) look like Sesame Street...Corgan sneers the words... He's full on devil corgan in a black leather dress ad blood red eyeliner - okay this is just the video, but it seems to be written into this track.
Armed to the the teeth; To me all the Smashing Pumpkins music is just one track. In this way, or maybe just because it's disk 2, this album starts with so many themes established. The mood of the album starts aggressively. Musically Billy is armed to the teeth and he's not afraid to use those weapons sometime in the next 50 minutes...He's built up so much potential energy.... but for now a distortion pedal will suffice...
2. Broken intermission and we're into the same heavy, driving pulse. This one is a little more thought out and we're back to the bed tempered, lost-love billy.(I can just imagine the action figures). The drumming is omnipotent in this track. The emotional chant "Love is suicide" this early in the album is scarey. He's pissed off with her, but you know it's cos he still loves her.
£:10 and Jimmy Chamberlain shows his drumming form(as if he needed to prove something!!). Now we're well established into disk 2...
...33...
First quiet song on disk 2..... sad, quiet and pondering. He seems almost confused... The texture is delicate and beautiful:
"Tomorrow's just an excuse away, so I pull my collar up face the pain"
I love the image of the broken hearted walking through the rain cos they have nothing to do but think. Hoping they can remain unnoticed and wallow in the pain which is the only strength of feeling left of a relationship.
The ambient noise at the start of in the arms of sleep(track 4) adds so much humanity to the delicate texture which is built up by the acoustic brush drumming and the synth/e-bow drone. It's tracks like these that really set this album out from the "normal" pumpkins album. The double album really gave Corgan the space to explore.
By 2:00, we've got to the build up; the infinite sadness appearing through the Melloncollie grabbing onto the remnants of a lost relationship. The slow strumming arpeggios on a tinny steel strung guitar; the harp of grunge; the broken Debussy. "Suffer my desire"...
1979 - These loops always remind me of the first looped sound I was aware of - windy miller's windmill in Camberwick green:
Anyway.... This song really grooves.. It's almost disco, which gives it this feeling of reminiscence to a happier time played out by the characters in the song.He can be happy and talk about dreams, but only when he's projecting it on a fictional past persona of his - or maybe I've watched the video too many times. The drumming is so unconventional that it really drives the song.
2:30 - I'm a sucker for power chords... It's the real thing now - broke down and back to basics, with the big pumpkins sound... then back to pop same as it started.....
Tales of Scorched earth(Track 6) is the heaviest track on the album, but also the most empty. It's jokingly heavy - a little sketch where you can barely make out the words - anybody who turns off doesn't deserve what it's the precursor of... The truth is that there's heavier moments elsewhere in the Pumpkin's canon, but they are placed within context that takes you there a bit slower than this full on distortion hit. I like to think it;s corgan proving that his nose bleed metal roots are still there before he goes all muso on us.... and for this I think ti's the track where you can hear a smile on Corgan's face......
Turn up your stereo now!!!!
Thru the eyes of Ruby(track 7) starts with a beautiful processed piano and then full argegiatted build until 0:20 CRASH.... we're in standard pumpkins mode... spacey arpeggios - we've heard it before... The drumming is amazing.. Jimmy really know that less is more.
1:30 the lump appears in your throat... I don;t quite know what he did,,,, he recapitulated a previous theme he's fed us from somewhere. It;s beautiful like an old friend we've not seen for a while... It's maybe galapagos..... I swear I'll sit down and work it out one day... but the mystery remains good.
1:58 - It seems so long since I've heard that crash - and this time it happens while you're still recovering from billy(Armed to the teeth with context) pulling out that theme that we didn't know meant so much to us.
3:10 - "Spin your love around" Over another chord progression. "To appear to disappear"
He bring sit down...... as we enter the zone:
"YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE YOUNG"
In we go again, and he has us by the short and curlies... Track 7 of 14... this cannot be the climax, he's got more to give us!!!!
5:01and I've just been looked at funny for dancing along in the newspaper shop at schiphol airport... The drums are irresistible.....
5:36 hint of full on noise solo guitar.... but we come down instead.... there' s still some left.... journey not over... Tease!!!
Now we fade out... but not before 6:57... the lump turns to tears and hairs on the back of your neck stand up to a totally unrelated melody.... maybe it could have been a song, but its just used as of another more delicate side... maybe for later.
Track 8 - stumbeline. A homage to Subterranean Homesick blues by dylan, instead of continuing that theme, it turns into a little alternative tuning ditty... under three minutes...
What is a stumbeline???
He's back to alien bluesman looking back on some lost memory.
"Mommies in the manger" - Bizarre religious imagery...
"Come around ruby I could never sleep alone" - Is this the same ruby we just saw through the eyes of???
Track 9 - X.Y.U
Menacing, Loud, Angry.... looks like ruby didn't come round:
"I was lonely - she was by my side" - Past tense
No matter the emotions we've uncovered and exorcised, he;s still this angry ...
2:35 - a Drumming moment
"Mary had a little lamb" - religion??? Childhood???
"And in the eyes of Jackal I say God!" - Who knows?? He gets it out of his system anyway:
"Bye bye"... but to the woman or this persona??? The guitar goes completely out of control as if Corgan, it's controlling influence, has left....
Track 10 - We only come out at night....
More contrast, and we are back to windy miller inspired loops and harp like strums processed with god knows what...
"We only come out at night" - This time it's not the bad people of track one, but something sweeter...Has Corgan found beauty in this Dirgelike music?? Maybe it's the little demons who individually are filled with happy pianos and spacey strums...
In track 11(Beautiful), Corgan shows off his love for the 80's and Gary Numan and gives us a taste of what was to come on his solo album.. at 1:50 an arpeggio progression is used, which I think is so British, so brit pop... it feels very out of place. It's followed by a nah nah nah hey jude style chorus. You really start to wonder who's stole corgan...
Happy pop.... the demons of the night have gone and the sun is slowly coming out... it's that 5am summer night when you realise how long the adventure has lasted when the birds start singing.
From 3:20 there's a fade, leaving more and more reverb..... the beauty has faded away.... it can't last forever.....
Lily(My one and only) - Track 12
....we're still happy.... This is just a simple love song...
It's quite experimental though; ever so acoustic drums, a very dry Corgan... palm muted guitar, all held together by a meandering piano. The double album lets gems like this make it from B-side status to album. There is a boxed set of the 28 B-sides for this album, and when you listen to it, you realise this could have been a quadruple album.... Billy seemed to be on a role during this period, and thats not including all the post Kurt Cobain solo works of Courtney Love.
Back to Mellon Collie...with every passing track we have more guest vocals from the rest of the band. I see this as a slow stripping down of the natural roles in the band...as the concept album ends...
By Starlight.....(Track 13)
Over is the experimental, the hairs are back up on the back of the neck, a tear forms in the eye and a lump in the throat... just cos Corgan suggested a few motifs he's set up for us.
This groove is so funky for such a slow song....
1:20 we get the first Guitar wails for about 3 tracks...
2:00 we're into the full build of guitar - layers of sound playing with the themes which now seem part of us...It still has that stripped down more honest feel than crashing walls of guitar(but oh how I love them)
3:00 we have a wail that leads to climax.
3:42 The arpeggiated guitar form pulls everything together like and old friend... we meander of into dreams before we wake and start it all again..
Farewell and goodnight(Track 14)
Acoustic drums, waves, wah wah clean guitar - is it another little ditty of experimentation to close the album? No! Listen to the piano!! At the moment it pedals along to the chord sequence - one which we seem to know... everyone gets a shot at vocals, the texture loosens, there's less and less there... 1:32 a piano ornament catches your ear... before he plays with it an heads back down a scale... maybe it was nothing...
Back to the light singing but at 2:42 its different this time... The theme comes through and the tears start flowing... we're not imagining it... we've come full circle....and adventure in two parts representing the trials and tribulations of just one day... the happiness, anger, fear and just about every emotion in between.
3:28 I float... literally.... everything stops around me.... it all goes into slow mo... High on musical beauty
3:48 The chord progression of hope that we heard in the first track comes through and a smile comes through the tears of happiness.....fade out.... ready to start the whole thing again.
