Description
The ubiquity of the five songs that did become singles overshadows just how idiosyncratic and distinct they were in the scope of 1995. Has there been anything like “Tonight, Tonight” since? Orchestral strings typically signify weepy balladry or compositional pretension in rock music, not wonderful, lovestruck propulsion. While “Tonight, Tonight” is now inseparable from its Le Voyage dans la lune-inspired video, that the music existed without its guidance only stresses the Pumpkins’ sonic creativity. “Thirty-Three” was the final and least heralded of the singles– where on alt-rock radio was there room for a slowpoke, time-signature shifting country song with phased slide guitars and shuffling drum machines?
“Zero” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” are the ones that riled up the older folks and, yes, the lyrics are pissy and juvenile and fairly embarrassing. That said, they’re far more interesting from a sonic perspective than they’re often given credit for. They’re the songs where Flood’s digitized production fits better than the saturated, analog warmth Butch Vig lent to Siamese Dream. They’re basically new wave performed as pop-metal.
And of course, there’s “1979”, the one everybody can agree on. On a record that reveled in 70s prog and pomp without being restricted to it, it sounds futuristic. And while just as youth-obsessed as everything else here, it’s one of the few times where high school sounds like something that can be remembered fondly. Corgan loves to stress how it was the last song to make the record, and while its chorus does have an effortless charge embodying the “urgency of now,” it’s the only Mellon Collie song that functions best as nostalgia. That reading is no doubt abetted by another fantastic video, but while “1979” is an unimpeachable song, the rush to praise it as an outlier does its surroundings a tremendous disservice. While Mellon Collie is the realization of all Billy Corgan’s ambitions, most of the criticisms surround the lyrics for not being as personal as those on the tortured Siamese Dream. It’s this way by design.
The terms “sad machines” and “teen machines” are interchangeably used during “Here Is No Why”, a pep talk to the outwardly sullen mopes who Corgan urges to break free of either and ascend like its heroic guitar solo. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” is notorious for its chorus, but teen angst doesn’t fight fair; you need some seriously heavy ammo to resist it. The mudslide of distortion that ushers in its bridge leads towards two minutes of the most viscerally exciting music that Smashing Pumpkins produced. Then immediately after, the mournful “To Forgive” devastates with a personal detail that gives Corgan credibility in all of this: “And I remember my birthdays/ Empty party afternoons.” This is the kind of youthful, inexplicable emotional whiplash that can result in an immolating hatebomb called “Fuck You (An Ode to No One)” being followed by a giddy proclamation that “love solves everything.” It’s clearly not a mature way of dealing with life, but that’s only a problem if you somehow believe Mellon Collie isn’t meant as rock ‘n’ roll fantasy. When Corgan declares “I know that I was meant for this world” during “Muzzle”, it’s your happy ending.
So, yes, most people who have developed a meaningful relationship with Mellon Collie did so in their youth. The question is whether you can get anything new from this in 2012. As with all of the Smashing Pumpkins reissues, Mellon Collie is giving: the Deluxe boxed set justifies its sticker shock by containing “re-imagined cover art, velvet-lined disc holder and decoupage kit for creating your own scenes from the Mellon Collie Universe,” which is everything you’d imagine and thensome. There are an extra 64 tracks and only a few of them appeared on The Aeroplane Flies High, though most of these inclusions are demos or alternate takes, the sort of thing that should only be listened to multiple times by people who are being paid to do so, i.e., music critics and Flood.
But there is a way of hearing the same album differently as you refract it through your own experiences. “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” is rumored to have contained 70 guitar tracks; it’s a wedding vow punctuated by Corgan snarling “youth is wasted on the young.” This isn’t meant to negate the intent of the 90 minutes that preceded it, it’s a reminder of how Mellon Collie can communicate different things to someone who’s 30 as opposed to 15. Revisiting it can feel like leafing through a high school yearbook– not necessarily your own, just somebody’s. And there’s solace in how, for all of the navel-gazing that went on, the ridiculousness of it all somehow escapes you. What you wore, how you spoke, what you felt not so much seeming normal as just the way it is. You look at each person, thinking that they might hope to achieve the self-actualization promised by “Muzzle”, to lose themselves in another person in the manner described by “Beautiful” or “In the Arms of Sleep”, or to embrace their own awkwardness as a rallying cry like “We Only Come Out at Night”. Those events were all right around the corner, as they are for just about anybody growing up, but when you’re locked up in your room listening to Mellon Collie for hours on end, they seem as distant and fantastical as the album cover. When Corgan sings “believe in me” during “Tonight, Tonight”, you don’t have much of a choice if you want to escape.
I’d like to say “they don’t make ’em like this anymore,” which is true if you want to talk about rock bands who make double-LPs that sell 10 million copies thanks in part to lavish videos that air constantly on MTV. They do make ’em like this, in spirit, albeit very rarely– 2012 appears to be just as hostile as 1995 was towards embracing the life-altering possibilities of classic rock or pursuing actual populism. It’s no wonder Corgan is so agitated about the state of rock music these days, since his critics won. But every now again, there will be something like M83’s Hurry Up, Were Dreaming and Japandroids’ Celebration Rock– that get there in their own way and express what the Pumpkins did on “Tonight, Tonight”, that “the impossible is possible tonight,” as in right now. They have little to do with Mellon Collie except that they sacrifice being cool to show a deep respect for the way teenagers interact with music. When the world is a vampire, you don’t want history lessons or a list of influences, you want fucking magic. You don’t want lifestyle music, you don’t want Our Band Could Be Your Life. You want music that you can live inside. Damn right Smashing Pumpkins shot for the moon on Mellon Collie, but only because they wanted to give you the sun and the stars. (via Ian Cohen / Pitchfork)
Label: Virgin
Format: 4 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Repress, 180g,Box Set
Reissued: 2023 / Original Release: 1995
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock
File under: School Of Rock
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