Solara is out for real

[houseofglass11]

Jimmy’s drumming also is so predictable. Typical machine gun snare fills that he did on Zeitgeist every five seconds. He shouldn’t escape criticism either

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

Like, is there even a Fucken riff in this thing??? Can you call palm muting into power chords a riff? Isn’t that like where most bands stop and go, ok we’ve got sort of a skeleton, now we need something to actually sell it?

Like, uh, A FUCKEN RIFF???

lol

[houseofglass11]

What’s the latest from Sad Machines on this track. Are they creaming themselves over it?

[fuzzyroes]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

But it’s also the astonishingly bland, uninspired, lazy riffs, the nonsensically active drumming

Like, and this is supposed to be hard rock, y’know? I don’t think they were going for laffs, here, but that is exactly what it provokes in me

That's the thing I find most puzzling about it. They supposedly hard 3 guitarists in the studio recording on this. I was really hoping for some cool guitar interplay, but it's really about as simplistic as it gets.

Keep in mind, if you recall the D'arcy correspondence, Billy said it was just he and Jimmy in there to knock 1 song out and that James was hardly there, so this is probably just a song they knocked out quickly for the sake of having something "new".

[run2pee]

You know it’s bad when the true believers are all like “...but maybe it’s not the final mix guys! Oh wait, try it on headphones everyone! Oh wow, it finally grew on me, I discovered suddenly that I LOVE generic cookie cutter palm-muting on the 4/4!”

And then, inevitably, “it’s bad on purpose it’s a STATEMENT YOU GUISE”

[fuzzyroes]

Originally Posted by houseofglass11

What’s he latest from Sad Machines in this track. Are they creaming themselves over it?

Everyone on Reddit surprisingly hates it and they're always the biggest fanboys which isn't surprising as I believe they're many of the same people who post on Sad Machines.

[Elphenor]

I was gonna say James signed off on this damn but then he has been playing with shitty A Perfect Circle

[fuzzyroes]

Originally Posted by pavementtune

I see. what was the reasoining for releasing this thing or any other "new" track now then at all?
I do not get what was going on in band management here to say "hell yea, let's do Solara, now."

granted, I haven't understood the single choices in many, many years with Bully, but this is baffling altogether.

how could have NOT releasing any track now have a worse outcome than releasing this?

Radio stations often want a new single out when they're pumping up and heavily promoting upcoming tour dates.

[pavementtune]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

And then, inevitably, “it’s bad on purpose it’s a STATEMENT YOU GUISE”

that's how MTAE became my go-to album for the gym for a solid month.

"bahaha this is comedy gold, it's so bad it's hilarious, that's what they were going for!"

solara made it into my audio comedy folder on the first listen, so my hopes for what comes next actually got higher instead of lower.

[Corgan's Bluff]

Will we get the next new song in less than a few weeks, like, when "Being Beige" was not so well received...?

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

You know it’s bad when the true believers are all like “...but maybe it’s not the final mix guys! Oh wait, try it on headphones everyone! Oh wow, it finally grew on me, I discovered suddenly that I LOVE generic cookie cutter palm-muting on the 4/4!”

And then, inevitably, “it’s bad on purpose it’s a STATEMENT YOU GUISE”

is this better or worse than "oh but this is a outtake from the last album, the other 7 songs now..."

[fuzzyroes]

It sucks though. Billy is finally back together with Jimmy and James, a big reunion tour coming up. This was really his last chance to come out with something awesome and really make a statement and gain some relevancy, but it's just more of the same. I can't see this shit getting much airplay.

[Ram27]

seriously why in the fuck. new reunion, let's pretend this never happened.....our lead single is a shitty song that didn't even make the cut for a shitty album

If there was a modern equivalent of the 666 tapes of BC/JC/JI just jamming in the studio, 5 minutes of that audio (VHS noise included) would be a better lead single

[BurtSampson]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

is this better or worse than "oh but this is a outtake from the last album, the other 7 songs now..."

Reminds me of the people when Tarantula came out who said “well obviously it’s a dumb rock single, they have to lead off with that, the real Pumpkins sounding stuff is going to be on Zeitgeist and blow us away”

[fuzzyroes]

There's just no nuances with the melody or anything here. You 'd figure he'd at least do something different on the outro chorus, change up the vocal melodies a bit, throw in some cool lead guitar, but it just all comes off as a little lazy. If James was seriously interested in taking part in this project, I'm a little disappointed by what he came up with in this song.

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by houseofglass11

Jimmy’s drumming also is so predictable. Typical machine gun snare fills that he did on Zeitgeist every five seconds. He shouldn’t escape criticism either

His parts for the chorus are way way too busy. It honestly reminds me of Mike during the fills

What's weird is he did the same thing on Mary Star, but it worked then. Crazy rolls in Lyric, ride bell syncopation in the chorus on Black Swan... I guess Billy could write a song worth shit then. And the production wasn't as bad

My iTunes looped back to I Am One after Solara finished and the difference in the drum production is staggering as well

[slayed23]

Congrats to the Washington Capitals for winning the Stanley Cup. They won't have to travel very far to visit the White House.

[Ram27]

Guys also remember the video has fucking mimes in it

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by fuzzyroes

Man, it's mostly the vocal performance that kills the whole thing. Like, you'd picture him to sing the "Bring down the sun" part all intensely and angry like he did in Bodies or something but he sings it all angelically. Not sure what he was going for with that

There is simply no dynamic range in his vocals anymore. He used to be so expressive and have a wide range of vocal styles, but now he's just a 1 trick pony, and the 1 trick sucks.

God, imagine Bodies composed by modern SP. 'Love is suicide' would be the cringiest fucking lyric (and it's still fairly cringy with all the 96 bombast). No quiet breakdown in the middle, no lead part - just 3 guitars doing the drop D power chord riff, with that shitty tone

Originally Posted by jm9843

If the idea was to dredge up an old "rocker" to promote the tour with minimum effort expended, why not go back to one of the actually good Zwan songs that was deemed "too Pumpkiny" at the time? (e.g. Chrysanthemum or Glorious). Is it a tacit acknowledgment that b0lly doesn't want to mail it in with quality unreleased material? He's got to, on some level, understand that those songs are 100x better than Solara.

keep going i'm almost there

Originally Posted by pavementtune

- play this one. live. at Madison Square Garden.

and then have every single blog review mention this dang track in not so kind words.

either option is less than optimal

It might come across slightly less shit live though. Most of ZG did

[DaveKShape]

This almost seems like a demo or something. Sloppiness/immediacy can be cool, but you've gotta at least have a solid song.

The production on Jimmy's drums is an absolute sin. Let's take a dude with some of the best snare dynamics/colors ever and suck the life out of his snare. SOLID PLAN!

[BurtSampson]

There are so many dolts on the SP subreddit who think this is amazing. Are they genuinely hearing a different song than me or are they all brainless sycophants who can’t admit SP could write a bad song

[Anthony_Kiedis]

Originally Posted by pavementtune

that's how MTAE became my go-to album for the gym for a solid month.

"bahaha this is comedy gold, it's so bad it's hilarious, that's what they were going for!"

solara made it into my audio comedy folder on the first listen, so my hopes for what comes next actually got higher instead of lower.

[fuzzyroes]

Originally Posted by BurtSampson

There are so many dolts on the SP subreddit who think this is amazing. Are they genuinely hearing a different song than me or are they all brainless sycophants who can’t admit SP could write a bad song

The only guy I saw praising it was Matt Sams, he was the guy who posted here under the KreatorKind handle... One of the biggest Billy Corgan homers you'll see in the communities. He'd always play the open mic nights when Billy had the tea shop.

I saw him say one time on Reddit that "Billy Corgan could murder a bus full of nuns and I'd still love the guy" hahaha.

[bingdon]

The version that leaked on YouTube this morning was definitely a different mix after listening to the Apple Music version. The drums sound much different

[MyKeyZ]

https://artwork-cdn.7static.com/stat...976753_350.jpg

Solara is now on Spotify...
https://open.spotify.com/album/2xYPd...R6izVbRxGcRuQg

FLAC for sale...
https://us.7digital.com/artist/the-s...solara-7976753

[slayed23]

Originally Posted by BurtSampson

There are so many dolts on the SP subreddit who think this is amazing. Are they genuinely hearing a different song than me or are they all brainless sycophants who can’t admit SP could write a bad song

Meh, the vast majority of the world likes absolutely horrible music. When I heard that 24K Magic song for the first time, I thought it was so bad. And then it wins a grammy.

Not saying this song is going to even get airplay past next week. But you could literally take any song by any band ever and there will be people out there that have it as their favorite song.

[MyKeyZ]

I'll say this, the official release quality is definitely an improvement compared to this 320kbps YouTube rip, which I doubt it actually a proper 320 as it's YouTube compression on top of compressing it again to MP3. So you're compounding the effects of lossy compression doing this. The official master sounds a bit fuller.

[vajohna]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

if this was on ZG it'd be one of the better tracks on the album

Zeitgeist outtakes like Stellar, Zeitgeist, and Ma Belle up there with quality Pumpkins stuff for me. Really a shame fans had to collect them all like Pokemon.

Sorry to say it, but Solara is boring.

[SensibleChuckle]

Super bad

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by DaveKShape

This almost seems like a demo or something. Sloppiness/immediacy can be cool, but you've gotta at least have a solid song.

The production on Jimmy's drums is an absolute sin. Let's take a dude with some of the best snare dynamics/colors ever and suck the life out of his snare. SOLID PLAN!

That's the thing, at least to me it sounds perfectly tight, just fucking boring

______

I am shook about everything drum related on the track. I think Jimbo forgot how to play rock songs, he's been doing so much jazz lately. ex that triplet flam transition

MP: You mentioned how you changed snare drums often for this record, which I think is kind of funny, because the snare sound on Gish was immediately identifiable. Even though it was your first record, all you had to do was listen to the drums, particularly the snare pop, and know that it was you playing.

JC: Well, I don't want to become reliant on or known for any one particular sound. I don't want to use tones to define my sound; I'd rather use technique. I'd rather have somebody hear the song speed up in an area or listen to the way the drums push the vocals--or maybe how the drums can be minimal at one point and blazing the next--and know it's me and my schizophrenic personality. [laughs]