REVIEW: Smashing Pumpkins, Machina The Machines of God (Virgin)
- Steve Kandell
If pretentiousness could be measured in pounds, the new Smashing Pumpkins album would be too heavy to carry home from the record store, much less fit into your hi-fi. But this is nothing new, as the Pumpkins have always seeked to infuse their heavy brand of Sabbath riff rock with an air of posed artiness. Look no further than your song or album titles.
"The Crying Tree of Mercury?" The Smashing Pumpkins are a throwback to a time when bands were supposed to put out double albums, so you could separate your stems and seeds on the gatefold. But it goes past that, to an unabashed sense of entitlement that Corgan et. al. exude with every note. That alone angers people because rock bands aren't supposed to want to be Big and Important anymore, so much of the self-aggrandizement just seems silly. And there's no shortage of silliness to be found here.
When Bonhamesque drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was booted out of the band a couple of years ago for a much-documented opium-related incident, the remaining Pumpkins decided not to replace the master skinsmith with another, inferior human drummer, but rather with a digital machine. Though said machine probably took a far smaller cut of the publishing residuals, its presence resulted in Adore, an ill-conceived and poorly received stab at techno-cherub rock. Corgan's soundtrack work for Lost Highway and Stigmata went even further in this automated direction. With the return of the exiled Chamberlin to the fold, much has been made of the band's return to the bombast of old, but this may be overselling the point.
The immersion into all things electronic is still very much in evidence on Machina, and not just in the album title. Leadoff track and single "The Everlasting Gaze" indeed recalls the sonic hugeness of days past, but is so awash in bells and whistles that the song lacks shape and doesn't stick in the craw like their best work can. And this is to say nothing of the "fickle fascination of an everlasting god" nonsense in the lyrics. Much of the album follows this overdriven trend -- not metal so much as metallic, like Siamese Dream dipped in liquid silver. Or wrapped tin foil.
Clocking in at ten minutes, "Glass and the Ghost Children" has a mid-song interlude in which Corgan ruminates on his place in the universe with all the depth and insight of a hungover frosh in a Philosophy 101 class. The tape of his voice speeds up and slows down, maybe to mask the identity of the speaker, maybe to couch the sermon in an air of artiness. Though you can't blame a guy for trying, there is a direct negative correlation between the level of pretention and the quality of the results.
The record isn't all embarrassing enormo-rock, however. "I of the Mourning" and "Stand Inside Your Love" are classic Pumpkins, blending thunderous acoustics with a pop sensibility in the way that they're so good at, when they put their mind to it.
