The Smashing Pumpkins "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (1995) - got it
This is another of those albums that I did not really need to listen to
for the list (but did anyway) because it is imprinted firmly on my
brain. This was one of the first albums that was 'mine' as opposed to
listening to my parents' or siblings' music. I used to sit
and listen to this album (all 2+ hours/28 tracks of it) at LEAST once a
day. Not doing anything else (except maybe making up music videos in my
mind) just listening to the music. Some days I wish I had the luxury of and concentration for doing that now.
It had been decided before the songs had even been written that the
Mellon Collie would be a double-album. Corgan stated they'd almost had
enough songs to make the previous album "Siamese Dream" a double album
too, which probably explains the full-length b-sides album "Pisces
Iscariot" that was released between the two studio albums.
What could easily have been a giant overindulgent mess ends up being
quite a cohesive musical journey (remembering that this is wound so deep
into my synapses that I can't be entirely unbiased towards it).
While the vibe is largely angst, loneliness and nihilism, there is also
joy and fear and love and the whole spectrum of human emotion. The
music has range too, with a delicate piano opening track seguing into "Tonight Tonight"
with its interesting mix of prominent strings with a melodic alt-pop
track (also the first Pumpkins song that I ever heard). I won't got track
by track through the album, but suffice to say it has punishing riffs (Tales of a Scorched Earth, Bodies), subtle melodic tracks (Galapagos,
Stumbleine), ventures into prog (Porcelina of the Vast Ocean), dabbles with electronic elements (1979, Beautiful) and a
dozen other genres. The whole thing is divided into two disks "Dawn to
Dusk" and "Twilight to Starlight" and the final track "Farewell and
Goodnight" features all four band members taking turns on the vocals to
wish the viewer sweet dreams, again letting you feel like you've taken a
musical journey.
I think an important part of the success of this album is that Billy and
the band were just creatively on fire at this point (or maybe it's just
that this is when their songwriting most aligned with my own personal
tastes). All 28 songs from the album are enjoyable, most of the 25-30
B-sides associated with the album are really good, even the unreleased demos I've heard from this
period are mostly decent. Nowadays I'm lucky if a new Pumpkins song
sticks with me past the first listen.
