Cyr The Quietus review

[Ihaguitar]

Best review I've read of this rather odd album

https://thequietus.com/articles/2930...ins-cyr-review

[TuralyonW3]

Says it all:


There is a problem, though. A fairly big one, actually. That specific musical pallet, while effective here and there, is pretty much the only sound on the record. The last time Corgan and co. tried for a double album they stretched themselves across a dozen genres and it felt like a journey. Here we have limited and muted colours scraped across a canvas that is simply too big to let them properly shine. Taken alone, these songs range from “really rather fine” to “ya know, fine”. Taken as a whole, they blur frustratingly together. Cole and Swan’s harmonies are a lovely counterpoint to the cyberscapes but they’re absurdly over-used, watering down their impact. Any of these tracks could have been retooled in any number of directions to provide some much-needed sonic variety. Corgan’s resistance to doing what everyone expects is admirable, but giving twenty tunes a tonal language that goes beyond consistent and out the other side into “samey” does decent songs a disservice.

[Ihaguitar]

Yeah, it's fairy accurate and gets to the nub of the problem most people have with the album. It really is a frustrating release.

[Rairun]

I've listened to a few songs, and I have no desire to listen to the rest. Can anyone point me to any lyric content you find really good, and give a brief explanation why? For example:

Boredoms in the bathroom / Shaking out the loose teeth / Sally's in the stirrups / Claiming her destiny / And nobody nowhere understands anything / About me / And all my dreams / Lost at sea

Such a vivid snapshot of a lonely childhood - the sensorial details that are buried in everyone's memories (shaking out loose teeth), the older teens or adults having their own shit to deal with, and a profound sense that you are different.

Take a day plant some trees / May they shade you from me / May your children play beneath / Blank page was all the rage / Never meant to say anything

A sombre and sincere acknowledgement of one's own destructive behaviour, and a genuine hope that the people you hurt will find some solace and flourish in the aftermath, away from you.

You can find dozens and dozens of these peppered throughout the original albums. What is Cyr about? Why should I care?

[Ihaguitar]

Originally Posted by Rairun

I've listened to a few songs, and I have no desire to listen to the rest. Can anyone point me to any lyric content you find really good, and give a brief explanation why? For example:



Such a vivid snapshot of a lonely childhood - the sensorial details that are buried in everyone's memories (shaking out loose teeth), the older teens or adults having their own shit to deal with, and a profound sense that you are different.



A sombre and sincere acknowledgement of one's own destructive behaviour, and a genuine hope that the people you hurt will find some solace and flourish in the aftermath, away from you.

You can find dozens and dozens of these peppered throughout the original albums. What is Cyr about? Why should I care?

No I don't find the lyrics in Cyr particularly appealing.

[run2pee]

Originally Posted by Rairun

I've listened to a few songs, and I have no desire to listen to the rest. Can anyone point me to any lyric content you find really good, and give a brief explanation why? For example:



Such a vivid snapshot of a lonely childhood - the sensorial details that are buried in everyone's memories (shaking out loose teeth), the older teens or adults having their own shit to deal with, and a profound sense that you are different.



A sombre and sincere acknowledgement of one's own destructive behaviour, and a genuine hope that the people you hurt will find some solace and flourish in the aftermath, away from you.

You can find dozens and dozens of these peppered throughout the original albums. What is Cyr about? Why should I care?

Would recommend u spend some time with birch grove, if u really want to give this one a chance

Then, i dunno, let the other lyrics hit u however they will. A lot of it is really, really bad if u ask me. But there’s some emotion in there. If i had to guess there’s some stuff about coming to terms with being an aging father, relationship turmoils (she takes the sweet outside), and being a doofus on halloween

[FoolofaTook]

Take a day plant some trees / May they shade you from me / May your children play beneath / Blank page was all the rage / Never meant to say anything

A sombre and sincere acknowledgement of one's own destructive behaviour, and a genuine hope that the people you hurt will find some solace and flourish in the aftermath, away from you.



lol yeah ok that's just like your opinion man

this "billy was a genius writer oh no what happened?" shit is on par with the "billy had the voice of an angel oh no what happened?" shit.

[Squish Squash]

Tbh, Lyrics are a very small part of why I think Billy was a god tier songwriter. Anyone who can write something like XYU and Disarm and pull them both off is a badass.

[run2pee]

You know amidst the silliness i think Cyr has some pretty strong classic corganisms

Don’t have time right now but ill post some examples on sunday

[FoolofaTook]

I believe the proper term is "Corgasms."



Your welcome.

[Ihaguitar]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

You know amidst the silliness i think Cyr has some pretty strong classic corganisms

Don’t have time right now but ill post some examples on sunday

Ok. We'll be waiting.

[Rairun]

Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

lol yeah ok that's just like your opinion man

this "billy was a genius writer oh no what happened?" shit is on par with the "billy had the voice of an angel oh no what happened?" shit.

I think back then he wrote meaningful lyrics, which were sometimes (but not always) great lyrics. Like, I don't think the lyrics to In the Arms of Sleep are amazingly written, but they serve the song really well. They paint a very specific emotional landscape, where he displays his disproportionate emptiness and loneliness and need - but there is some self-awareness to it too, about how it is unfair to see any one person as a solution to this. He's not Leonard Cohen, but it's a great song, and the lyrics serve it well.

My question here was genuine. I was and still am a huge fan of the original run of the band. I've long dismissed Billy as someone I could support, agree with or even like on a personal level, and I'm sure this influences my lack of faith in his abilities to produce meaningful art. The last time I truly gave him a chance was when he released American Gothic, though I've listened to every song he's put out since at least once.

I don't know. I listened to Colour of Love, and then I reread the lyrics carefully, and really, what is he saying here? "The colour of your love is gray" is such vague, unspecific writing. You could maybe overlook it if it were a throwaway line, but he repeats those damn words a hundred times over. Who does this resonate with?

Then you pay attention to the rest of the song, and he seems to be expressing some vague idea that he's always done all he could for someone, but he can go no further than that, and that his mantra is that whoever wants him in their life will atone, and that a lot of time has been wasted in a sort of limbo. So "the colour of your love is gray" amounts to a weary, dismissive statement: "your 'love' is meaningless to me, leave me alone", which fair enough, maybe we should, lol. But it makes for a very dull song. Is this all he can muster nowadays? Uninteresting, boring indifference?

Also, I don't want to be a pedant, but it should read "Whoever wants", not "Whomever wants".

[Rairun]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

You know amidst the silliness i think Cyr has some pretty strong classic corganisms

Don’t have time right now but ill post some examples on sunday

Looking forward to this because I don't have the time or patience to listen closely to 20 variations of Colour of Love, lol.

[paranoid]

i was playing adore in my car the other day, and when he sings that line about "may they shade you from me" my wife goes "jesus christ what a corny drama queen he is."

[Ihaguitar]

Lol, true

[Rairun]

Lol, if you say this to someone, yeah, I agree. But if it's a moment of introspection, not meant to be used to reach out and manipulate, I don't think it's dramatic. He probably did fuck up really badly.

[FoolofaTook]

What if he was really strung out on drugs and just wrote some random shit about trees and shade and children playing?

[houseofglass11]

Originally Posted by paranoid

i was playing adore in my car the other day, and when he sings that line about "may they shade you from me" my wife goes "jesus christ what a corny drama queen he is."

nothing corny about Blank Page. I'd be heading straight to divorce court after that kind of outburst!

[FoolofaTook]

Purple Blood >>> Blank Page

[enthusaroo]

The biggest problem with this album is right in front of our noses...

most of the songs suck. and yeah it's all Corgan.. it's not really The Smashing Pumpkins

so two reasons why this album sucks

mystery solved

[T&T]

Billy's been full of corny lines over the years.
making teens sad is like shooting fish in a barrel.

in retrospect I think he genuinely regrets all the narcissism he spawned. can't change the past. He tried promoting 'love love love', but that's didn't fix all of the broken narcissists he attracted.

[Corgan's Bluff]

Another Corgan-record that even got mentioned in the ROLLING STONE again:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...eview-1096547/

Smashing Pumpkins Indulge Billy Corgan’s Synth-Rock, Dickensian Fantasies on ‘Cyr’
Nostalgia be damned, the band goes full electro-pop on its second reunion album

**###

By KORY GROW

Billy Corgan tried fan service on the Smashing Pumpkins’ last album, 2018’s Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 — which saw the reunion of three-quarters of the band’s grunge glory-days lineup — but he must have decided half-hearted nostalgia wasn’t worth the hassle after the record got a tepid response.

The Pumpkins’ latest, Cyr, features the same lineup as Shiny and Oh So Bright, but it feels more like a Corgan solo album. The principal Pumpkin produced the record himself and wrote all of its songs, which the band played mostly on synthesizers. But rather than a through-line back to the Pumpkins’ trip-hoppy Adore, Cyr often sounds like Corgan was going for a new-wave sound that recalls Talk Talk, and unfortunately he has neither the singular vision he had in the Nineties nor the melodic savvy of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis to pull it off. Instead, most of the songs, all filled with neo-goth romantic lyrics, stumble and fumble over meandering melodies with no sing-along choruses to buttress them. It’s Steampunk Billy trying to navigate his way through his own gauzy ether.

Aside from the distinctive, un-Pumpkinness of it all, Corgan has gilded the songs with distractingly highfalutin, Victorian-era three-dollar words, which would make it difficult to sing along, even if the songs were catchy. Pop quiz: Is “For inamorata and swan-like swain/For valentine and twinning flame/On whiff of pain and cross/Your cedar burns, aflame” a lost verse from Lewis Carroll’s slithy poem “Jabberwocky” or a sing-speak line from Cyr’s second song, “Confessions of a Dopamine Addict”? It’s hard to tell. Elsewhere, he mispronounces the Gaelic word “Samhain” in a way that would make his old MTV Buzz Bin buddy Glenn Danzig wince (“Wyttch”) and he fills three minutes of “The Hidden Sun” with references to Oliver Twist, Aesop, templar thieves, and dauphines. It’s a lot to take in, especially within the confines of the general mechanical sound of the record, which buries the drum work of Jimmy Chamberlin, one of the alt-rock era’s greatest stickmen, with electronic percussion.

Despite the speed bumps, Corgan came up with a few songs that shine oh so bright through the fog. He stumbled on a decent disco approach that turns his bleat around on “Adrennalynne,” and “Ramona” is a bit like Corgan’s synth-pop take on the Stones’ “Angie,” as he asks, “Ain’t it like our dreams?” The latter song has the best and catchiest chorus on the album, but it is buried in between so many of Cyr’s other frights of fancy that it gets lost in the fray.

With no rage and no cage, the rat is finally free. He just doesn’t know what to do with himself.



Bored with fan service, the Smashing Pumpkins embrace synth rock on their new album 'Cyr' and stumble.

[eviltimeban]

My theory on the "sam hane" thing is that no one involved actually bothered to know what he was singing. You'd think one of the band or engineers would cop that pronunciation. But they might have figured it was just more of Billy's "vex the whorl" nonsense.

[brothahi4L]

Exactly.....his word salads are unbearable....

[theslipstream]

I enjoyed reading the Quietus review. After posting a harsh critique on this site a week ago, I have to admit that I've softened my stance on the album since then. The individual melodies are now making their own space in my head; I'm finding myself humming interesting bits from songs such as Save Your Tears, The Hidden Sun and Schaudenfreud ("Forgotten... familiar").

One criticism that will never be weighed against the album is not having a consistent sonic theme. It's like an episode of Iron Chef where the contestants have to make 20 dishes with octopus, except the dishes are songs and the common ingredient is synths. None of them deviate too far from the core ingredient.

I'm at the point where I don't mind playing the entire track listing from start to finish during the day as a way of having something interesting going in the background while I work. The only tracks I skip past with regularity are Dulcet in E (too syrupy so early in the track order - should have been the closer), Starrcraft, Adrennalynne (I'm never going to be on a stage), and usually, Tyger x2.

In particular I really dig The Hidden Sun. It creates a beautiful landscape with a driving (but not aggressive) beat. It feels familiar and relatable despite its ridiculously obtuse lyrics.

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by eviltimeban

My theory on the "sam hane" thing is that no one involved actually bothered to know what he was singing. You'd think one of the band or engineers would cop that pronunciation. But they might have figured it was just more of Billy's "vex the whorl" nonsense.

i've literally never heard the word samhain until that song came out

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by theslipstream

I'm at the point where I don't mind playing the entire track listing from start to finish during the day as a way of having something interesting going in the background while I work.

i have this on constantly when doing schoolwork

[Ihaguitar]

Originally Posted by Ram27

i've literally never heard the word samhain until that song came out

Same here, and given very few people speak Gaelic these days I would think the majority of people wouldn't know what it meant, and that includes sound engineers and band members.

[eviltimeban]

Originally Posted by Ihaguitar

Same here, and given very few people speak Gaelic these days I would think the majority of people wouldn't know what it meant, and that includes sound engineers and band members.

I don't think you need to speak "Gaelic" to know the word, it has been used in other contexts.

[Ihaguitar]

Originally Posted by eviltimeban

I don't think you need to speak "Gaelic" to know the word, it has been used in other contexts.

Such as?