Nice and atmospheric, this one. It's taken from his most recent release, The Future Embrace. Overall the Corgan has veered off in a more electronic synthy direction compared to the psychedelic rock-outs of his earlier stuff. It's not a million miles away from Ava Adore, by way of comparison. There's also a rather out-there cover of the Bee Gees 'To Love Somebody', a duet with Robert Smith, though the hairy one can hardly be heard at all.
He's not firing on all the cylinders that he used to when he was in the Smashing Pumpkins, and this album will take a bit of getting used to, but he still has flashes of the genius that, in my opinion, made him better than Kurt at the height of the early 90's alternative explosion. He also did a unique line in a curious sort of frontman anti-charisma, which was refreshingly different and served to scare off the casual everyman (I don't like sharing my bands with just anybody, you know).
I always thought the Pumpkins were at their best when they were doing slightly off-kilter alt. rock rather than writing rock anthems. Gish was uniformly great and possessed of Billy's greatest flash of all, Rhinoceros, and Siamese Dream kicked ass, but Pisces Iscariot...Wow. I remember hearing that when getting a lift to Limerick to visit my brother, and hearing it, I was in a trance for the whole journey. Soothe, Obscured, Blue, La Dolly Vita, Starla, just about everything on that was indie eccentricity brilliantly married with RAWK (man). Sometimes I think they should swap around their A-sides and their B-sides. And of course the Pumpkins had drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, who James Iha once referred to as the most gifted of all of them.
It got a little bombastic for them with Mellon Collie, what with drug overdoses and everything, but songs like Porcelina.. and Thru the Eyes of Ruby still showed that when they pushed out the boat, they were one of the most killer bands on the planet. Then came Ava Adore, cool once you had gotten used to it, with another classy highlight in the form of For Martha. Then came Machina.., which had some low points but still a very very high one in the form of Glass and the Ghost Children. And then came the split.
Then came Zwan, a project that still threw up some good songs in spite of what some Pumpkins fans will tell you, but they split acrimoniously as well. Bad feeling and fortune seems to follow Billy like a bad smell sometimes.
Now there is this offering, which has its moments, but I suspect it won't really do it for the indie kids, if they still exist. They seem to be a dying breed now. It just isn't the same as it was in my day anymore!
It's official. I have turned into my father.
Anyway, on billycorgan.com the shaven headed one has already announced that he wants his own band back. God only knows if they'll all ever be able to sit in the same room again, let alone play together, but if it results in a return to their heyday, I'm all for it.
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In other news, the lab I was supposed to have today was replaced with a placement in a Pharmacy for three hours. All of the stuff I had to do under supervision was done and stamped in my logbook, so even though I'll have other visits to other clinics, I can now relax safe in the knowledge that the requirements for this aspect of the course have already been dealt with for the whole year. Woo hoo!
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