Not So Smashing Pumpkins
Washington Post
By Mark Jenkins
(1995, week of their release of MCIS)
The world disappoints Billy Corgan. So do love, life and perhaps even music. The only that seems to satisfy the Smashing Pumpkins singer-songwriter, in fact, is the sound of his own voice, both literally and metaphorically.
There's plenty of that on "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (Virgin), the Chicago quartet's third long-player (fourth if you count a collection of outtakes and B-sides). One of the few double albums of new material released since the CD's made 70-minute single-disc playing times possible, "Mellon" establishes the Pumpkins as the most pretentious of post-punk pomp-rockers.
That's not a great surprise. The band's breakthrough album, 1993's "Siamese Dream," offered a post-punk update of progressive's rock's misbegotten extravagance. Produced by Butch Vig, who helped propel alternative rock into the mainstream by giving Nirvana's "Nevermind" its hard-rock grandeur, "Dream" was as sweeping as early-70's Yes, although denser and edgier. Both bratty and grandiose, it was the album that made prog-rock safe for under-30's.
Produced by Corgan and British electro-rock experts Flood and Alan Moulder, "Mellon" features many of the same elements buy spreads them thinly over two hours, 28 songs and two discs. (These bear the subtitles "Dawn to Dusk" and "Twilight to Starlight.") Where such "Dream" standards as "Today" contrasted soft and hard passages in a single track, "Mellon" sometimes sustains a single mode for several songs. Supplemented by a string section and even a rippling harp, Corgan and his bandmates indulge in pseudo-romantic arrangements on songs like "Cupid de Locke" and "Thru the Eyes of Ruby"; if Rick Wakeman didn't play on these tracks, he should have.
"Mellon Collie" opens with the title piece, an instrumental prelude drippy enough for a Meat Loaf album [that was a stupid comment], and an orchestral rocker, "Tonight, Tonight," that declares, "We'll crucify the insincere tonight." Things get punkier for a while, with a series of songs that emphasize caterwauling guitars and Corgan's discontent. "Living makes me sick/So sick I wish I'd die/Down in the belly of the beast," announces "Jellybelly," while "Zero" insists that "God is empty just like me" and "I'm in love with my sadness."
This section includes the propulsive "Bullet with Butterfly Wings," the album's first single and perhaps its catchiest track. This song is apparently in love with Corgan's sadness too, since it begins "The world is a vampire" and ends "I still believe that I cannot be saved." The sing-along chorus that will be a highlight of this year's Pumpkins shows? "Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage."
James Iha, the other guitarist, had a hand in writing tow of the songs, and Corgan insists that the Pumpkins are a band. The same humorless self-absorption that makes the singer such an annoying live performer, however, dominates "Mellon." The album is a tribute to Corgan's skills as melodist-there are both very pretty ballads and vigorous rockers-but not to his common sense. If "Mellon" is trapped in a cage, it's one Corgan built himself.