Emily: I'll admit, when I first saw that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness clocks in at over 2 hours I was a bit overwhelmed. Especially after listening to Nick Drake's 28-minute-long Pink Moon, an album at over 4 times the length was a daunting task. Would I be able to pay attention to the whole thing? Would it keep dragging on, seemingly never-ending? Would I even remember which songs I liked (and didn't) by the end? Luckily, if any album should be two hours long (and few should), Mellon Collie should be that album. It's ambitious in length, breadth, and scope, but The Smashing Pumpkins live up to that ambition wonderfully. They explore a variety of musical styles and instrumentation, from subdued classical piano to modernist synthesizers to grungy guitars. It all works, and the band switches up the style so drastically from track to track that it held my attention for the whole two hours and constantly kept me wondering what would come next. Even the singles that came from this album are wildly diverse, yet they all stand as alt-rock classics. If only The Smashing Pumpkins ambition and talent could withstand the egos (well, one giant Billy Corgan ego) that brought them down - maybe we could've had a phenomenal 3-hour follow-up to review.
Favorite Tracks: Bullet with Butterfly Wings; 1979; Zero
Zack: Despite the fact that this behemoth of an album
is 2 hours long, I must have listened to it at least two dozen times before.
It’s just one of my all-time favorites to press play and just let go. I never
really had a reason for why I liked it so much, but this quote by Billy Corgan
sums it up pretty well: “I'm waving goodbye to me in the rear view mirror,
tying a knot around my youth and putting it under the bed.” He also mentions
that he aimed the album at people 14 to 24. Hey, that’s me! When I thought about
the specifics of when I listen to it, I realized that’s it’s usually situations
where I’m really stressed. You know, when there’s some big, bad adult thing I
need to do when I just want to go lay out in the sun or whatever. For its
massive size, Mellon Collie really hit its target on the head. Soundwise, it’s
very diverse. There are songs that are rough and physical sounding. There are
songs that are moody and brooding. There are songs that are vulnerable. And
there’s everything in between. Sometimes, they kind of miss (see: Fuck You).
Most of the time, they hit (see: all six singles and a whole host of other
songs). Really, it’s just an exceptionally good album that both blows you away
and sucks you in at the same time. Now, that doesn’t change the fact that
Corgan is a huge prick who has sabotaged the band to the point that they
haven’t been anywhere close to a consistently solid album on the level of
Siamese Dream in over 15 years, let alone Mellon Collie levels of greatness.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, once upon a time, Smashing Pumpkins put
out one hell of an album.
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