see, you can construct the backwards logic from that recognition. the descent into mediocrity began when he started writing singles instead of records, and just padding up the length of the ep with throwaway filler. where we once had the rubies and the porcelinas and the hummers and the silverfucks, which were the real draw for a person such as myself, we then had the glass & the ghost children, or the heavy metal machines. yikes. all the way through, even after machina, his singles were always halfways listenable, but the problem is that they weren't supposed to be a singles band, dammit. where's the epics? where's the substance?
and, it just kind of got worse and worse until he didn't even bother with the pretense, and just released standalone singles. and, that is when he really lost me - not due to the instrumentation but due to the seriousness of the writing.
now, he gets his band back together and the single for what he imagines is his "old fans" is really the only throwaway on the disc.
but, what his old fans want is for him to take some of the more intricate writing on this record and blow it up into a 20 minute rock opera, not to throw the cheesiest most cliched thing you could imagine at us, like it's some kind of red meat.
excluding that one....mistake....there's two types of tracks, here. one is an evolution of the style present on the future embrace, which, if you haven't heard, you should go track down. he's even lifting melodies directly from that record, although i'd have to go back to listen to identify the tracks. that was released as a solo record, not a pumpkins record, so, in a sense, maybe there's a bookending of thoughts; you have to imagine it was meant to be a pumpkins record, and the reasons it ended up as a solo record have to do with arguments and rejections. and, in that sense, maybe it's like he picked up where he left off. the solo record came out in between machina II, and the demise of the band, and the "comeback record", zeitgeist.
these tracks really aren't anything new, to old fans. first, they're fundamentally retro tunes, in the sense that they glean back to the earliest pumpkins demos, which you need to scour the internet to find and actually demonstrate a dominant cabaret voltaire influence. i may have been the only person at alt.fan.smashing-pumpkins that actually knew who bon harris was back in 1997, but go check out some nitzer ebb, too. that's not to mention the synth-pop tracks on mellon colie. raindrops + sunshowers got some radio play, right? it's crystal clear where this is coming from, and he's been doing it for decades; he's really just picking up where he left off, and that's the part of it that is familiar and sort of hard to recoil (puns, huh.) from.
the other type of track is a more detailed extrapolation that seems to be intentionally delving into witch house, which is the term he won't drop. he's trying to distance himself from bowie as a baby boomer, whilst seemingly forgetting that mr. bowie was the cultural chameleon; sort of ironic, truly. if corgan intends to be "contemporary", bowie is his model and not his foil. and, that's fine - i'm rooting for him. i want him to make something relevant.
bowie himself was delving into this space right before he died, but of course via a different set of filters. where corgan is right is that bowie was in fact an old man by the end of it, and wasn't particularly interested in letting his roots go entirely. but, i suspect we'll see the same sort of thing from mr. corgan when he's in his late 60s rather than his early 50s. bowie was still trying to be young at that point, too.
so, it may seem sort of silly for corgan to name drop grimes or poppy. or lorde for that matter. and, i think he ought to be listening to son lux instead, anyways. there's an instrument you may want to remember about in son lux, billy - a proof of concept. go get inspired, man. but, it's not so silly for his head to be in this space; that's what he'd be listening to if he was two generations younger than he is, and that's what his market is.
but, i want to flip the situation over, because these kids are going to mostly cite musicians that came up alongside the pumpkins, but had much smaller audiences, like john balance. and, whether he realizes it or not, he's come full circle - he's aspiring to create something like horse rotorvator. and, again, i can only egg him on.
when you put it together is it any good, though? see, like i say - it's light. but, i don't hate it and, excluding that one awful track, i can passively enjoy the bulk of it without cringing. and, i haven't been able to say that in honesty about any pumpkins record since 1997.
if this is a second wind, great. i'm looking forward to this so-called sequel to mellon collie, except...
my gut is saying noooooo. don't do it. just write a new record....but give it the kind of attention you used to....
and, make some space for guitars. dammit.