I'm listening to MTAE for the first time

[pinetree]

it doesn't suck, although anaise seems to suck (only mid way through the record so far)

I've recently come to terms with knowing BC is extremely unlikable as a person, but still in possession of a talent for music, and although SP2 obviously isn't Sp1, I enjoy listening to it. gives me a good mix of nostalgia and newness. of course I could go for less "lovers" and whatnot, but the absurdity of the whole SP2 spectacle is just enough to keep things interesting to me.

[Mals Marola]

Anaise is one of the good ones, imo

[MonumentsRocks]

I like Tommy Lee's drumming on Anaise. I wonder how Jimmy would have handled it.

[fuzzyroes]

I've never understood why Monuments was received so poorly.

I think it's one of the best releases of the reformation... More enjoyable than even Zeitgeist in some ways.

[Corgan's Bluff]

The best heyloweeny horror noise you can tread yourself with...

More enjoyable as a laxative.

[Razor Star]

Originally Posted by fuzzyroes

I've never understood why Monuments was received so poorly.

I think it's one of the best releases of the reformation... More enjoyable than even Zeitgeist in some ways.

Ooh! That's an interesting debate. I think there are better songs on Zeitgeist, but I think Monuments is a far more likable package as a whole. Z has some really amazing songs with some off production choices- in retrospect it got way rougher a ride than it deserved - if SP1 had put out Tarantula, Bring the Light, That's The Way My Love Is or Steller no-one would have blinked. There's better songs on there than on Machina/2 IMO.

Monuments gets a way rougher ride than it really deserves, probably because it really is the least interesting SP record. That doesn't make it a bad record, but it's not especially adventorous and aside from leaning into the vintage synths, it's nothing we hadn't heard before. Even in the Teargarden era BC was taking chances and exploring new ideas, many of which fell on their arse. And then there's Oceania, which was a very complete vision.

MTAE doesn't really push the boundaries. Jeff said recently that they were really hampered with it by not being a real band, not having a drummer and bassist to work with and collaborate, especially the lack of drummer. You can definitely hear that - defaulting to an SP-rock/pop mode. That said I think there's some lovely songwriting on there - Being Beige is a great Corgan pop song, with a lovely chorus. I really like Drum and Fife. I'm not sure why Run2Me gets such a harsh ride either. A couple of duffers, but it's still a really competent record.

[Razor Star]

I just remembered I reviewed Monuments when it came out:

There's a bit in the 1994 movie Trainspotting where Jonny Lee Miller's character expresses his "unifying theory of life" with specific regard to rock stars: "at some point you get it," he says, "you lose it, and you never get it back". Ewan McGregor pulls out Lou Reed as a counter-argument, because "some of his solo stuff's not bad." The reply is damning. "No, it's not bad, but it's not great either, is it? he says. "And in your heart you kind of know that although it sounds alright, it's actually just... shite." Ouch. It's an assumption Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan has been fighting against for nearly a decade now.

Like Robert Smith before him, Billy Corgan believes in art for art's sake, in celebrating his work but also in adding to it; that his best work could still be ahead of him despite the arguably era-defining albums he made twenty years ago. Hence we have Monuments To An Elegy, the ninth(ish) Smashing Pumpkins album, technically part of a sprawling multi-record concept called Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, though that idea may or may not have been quietly shelved- Corgan hasn't mentioned it in a year or so.

Certainly Monuments... doesn't really sound like a direct sequel to 2012's Oceania: while that album was a proggy trawl through dreamy grunge rock, this one is about punch, energy and -most surprisingly- brevity. The whole album comes in at 32 minutes, 25 seconds: That's shorter than some Pumpkins songs, this a band whose song 'Gossamer' has known to top three quarters of an hour on some nights. By Smashing Pumpkins standards a 32 minute album seems inconceivable, but short and sharp is the order of the day here. That's part of the reason Motley Crue's Tommy Lee has been drafted in on drums-his work is thumping, sharp and competent: he nails it, but he's also basically invisible, where previous Pumpkins drummers, especially the astounding Jimmy Chamberlin, were front and centre. Lee does exactly the job he needs to. Likewise there's no showy guitar, Corgan and current Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder, who also gets a co-producer credit here, are hiding in plain sight. There's lots of good guitar playing, but no flashy riffs and absolutely nothing you'd call a solo. It gives Monuments… its greatest strength: a self contained identity.

Everything is here to serve the songs, and those songs are not bad at all. 'Tiberius' and 'Being Beige' are microcosm bookends of the Corgan alt.rock formula. 'Tiberius' opens the record by slamming you through a wall of guitars and synth riffs, before plunging you into a fizzy pop chorus and out into a rock-out mid section, while 'Being Beige' shares DNA with minor-key Pumpkins singles 'That's The Way My Love Is', 'Try Try Try' and '1979'. Again Corgan paints the chorus large, and it really is a doozy. The hooks come thick and fast throughout the album, partly you suspect because its author wants to remind us he's been capable of them all along- that his various sonic misadventures in discord and lengthy prog have been creative choices.


Elsewhere Corgan's interest in vintage synth sounds, one of the clearer tropes of the Teargarden material, is very much in evidence. Most tracks have the light and shade of electronics colouring them somewhere, often working as hard as the guitar. 'Anaise' is drenched in sci-fi phasing and little stingy hooks, while 'Dorian' skips along a backdrop of drones and buzzes, propelled by a clockwork drum machine bringing to mind Corgan's oft-overlooked 2005 solo album TheFutureEmbrace. Most obvious of all is 'Run2Me', a burbling synthpop tune pulling from late-80s Depeche Mode and New Order, and a spiritual successor to Oceania's 'One Diamond, One Heart or, if you want to back as far as 1998, Adore's 'Perfect'.

Best of all is 'Drum + Fife', the darkest and most atmospheric point of the record, though it still lives within the same pop framework that marks Monuments all the way through. Here Corgan sings of the futile call to battle amid a rat-a-tat drum tattoo and a nagging little synth riff presumably representing the pipes of long-dead soldiers. When Corgan declares "I will bang this drum til my dying day" it doesn't take a huge metaphorical leap to see what he's getting at: they may have won battles, rotated the troops and been shot down again continually, but there's still a fight to be had, and for Smashing Pumpkins the war has never ended.

[Zer0 Hour]

Monuments was received poorly because it fucking blows, no matter how much you personally like bullshit like “Anti-Hero.”

[smashingjj]

I know I'm on a smashing pumpkins forum (or am I?) but I don't really get why you would spend your time listening to bad or mediocre albums and discussing wether or not one mediocre album has more relative high points than the other

there's still so many music coming out every fucking year that I'd rather listen to a thousand times more than spending any time at all to that shit

I mean you need to listen to an album once or twice to have any kind of idea if it's worth investing more time into and I'll listen to shiny and oh tl;dr exactly as much I'm sure

[smashingjj]

superfan smashingjj reporting from Europe, back to you, razor star

[FoolofaTook]

i stopped listening after american gothic. i mean, once i got way too high and made the mistake of putting on oceania. i barely made it through the whole thing. it was pretty brutal, in a bad way.

[Zer0 Hour]

American Gothic was okay but I'd much rather listen to the Cult song by the same name. That whole album was so good. It came out around the same time as Machina and after listening to that mess of an album and concluding that the Pumpkins were done, I picked up Beyond Good and Evil and was like, "Okay, now THESE guys still know how to fucking rock." That album is criminally underrated.

[Mals Marola]

Originally Posted by Razor Star

I just remembered I reviewed Monuments when it came out:

you lost me at the mis-dating of Trainspotting. It was '96 not '94
I will simply not tolerate that kind of lackadaisical disrespect toward that movie MAMMOTH

[Zer0 Hour]

What did you think of Trainspotting 2?

[Mals Marola]

'sokay

[MonumentsRocks]

Originally Posted by Razor Star

Ooh! That's an interesting debate. I think there are better songs on Zeitgeist, but I think Monuments is a far more likable package as a whole. Z has some really amazing songs with some off production choices- in retrospect it got way rougher a ride than it deserved - if SP1 had put out Tarantula, Bring the Light, That's The Way My Love Is or Steller no-one would have blinked. There's better songs on there than on Machina/2 IMO.

Even if Z' was released immediately after Machina with D'Arcy back in the band, it still would sell poorly, because nu metal and rap rock were in, grunge and guitar solos were out.

Originally Posted by Razor Star

Monuments gets a way rougher ride than it really deserves, probably because it really is the least interesting SP record. That doesn't make it a bad record, but it's not especially adventorous and aside from leaning into the vintage synths, it's nothing we hadn't heard before. Even in the Teargarden era BC was taking chances and exploring new ideas, many of which fell on their arse. And then there's Oceania, which was a very complete vision.

MTAE doesn't really push the boundaries.

You criticize the album for being uninteresting and lacking adventure or newness. Those critiques are expedient pretexts to justify a forgone conclusion. There's no fine line where an album crosses the threshold from having to not having these qualities, it's a completely arbitrary value judgement, but critics treat it as if it were some indelible characteristic of the music itself. Of course, this is par the course in music critique, you can't be blamed for adopting a modus operandi that precedes all of us by decades, at least. You say it doesn't sound different enough, but one of the common criticism of the reformed band was that they sounded too different. The critiques are all bullshit.

If MTaE was released by some band that lives down the street, everyone would think it is great. Nearly all the criticism is that it's bad because the Smashing Pumpkins are capable of "better". That's just an excuse people use to blame their own personal disappointment on the bad. If it's an enjoyable listen, it's an enjoyable listen.

Originally Posted by Razor Star

Jeff said recently that they were really hampered with it by not being a real band, not having a drummer and bassist to work with and collaborate, especially the lack of drummer. You can definitely hear that - defaulting to an SP-rock/pop mode. That said I think there's some lovely songwriting on there - Being Beige is a great Corgan pop song, with a lovely chorus. I really like Drum and Fife. I'm not sure why Run2Me gets such a harsh ride either. A couple of duffers, but it's still a really competent record.

Jeff is just creative with his excuses. I'd re-assert from the paragraphs above, there was nothing for Jeff to defend against, but to the extent that his is, Billy has always operated as a musical dictator, writing and playing nearly every instrument short of the drums.

A lot of people enjoy easy listening pop rock. The critics by and large are blaming their own lack of musical flexibility on the band, and/or using their bully pulpit to settle a score with the artist, and while I'm sure this is not a rare occurrence in general, it couldn't be more true of MTaE.

[Mals Marola]

Originally Posted by MonumentsRocks

Even if Z' was released immediately after Machina with D'Arcy back in the band, it still would sell poorly, because nu metal and rap rock were in, grunge and guitar solos were out.

I think it would have had a bit more purpose if it had come out back then, tbh. While fellow "rock titans" i.e. Metallica were practically bending over to appease the so-called Nu Metal crowd w/ an album like St. Anger, Bill could have pulled out the whole "fuck what you think is cool" Cherub Rock type stunt that went against all the 2000s modern rock tropes in the book

Either that or we would have just gotten Zwan under the SP moniker

[Razor Star]

Originally Posted by MonumentsRocks

Even if Z' was released immediately after Machina with D'Arcy back in the band, it still would sell poorly, because nu metal and rap rock were in, grunge and guitar solos were out.



You criticize the album for being uninteresting and lacking adventure or newness. Those critiques are expedient pretexts to justify a forgone conclusion. There's no fine line where an album crosses the threshold from having to not having these qualities, it's a completely arbitrary value judgement, but critics treat it as if it were some indelible characteristic of the music itself. Of course, this is par the course in music critique, you can't be blamed for adopting a modus operandi that precedes all of us by decades, at least. You say it doesn't sound different enough, but one of the common criticism of the reformed band was that they sounded too different. The critiques are all bullshit.

If MTaE was released by some band that lives down the street, everyone would think it is great. Nearly all the criticism is that it's bad because the Smashing Pumpkins are capable of "better". That's just an excuse people use to blame their own personal disappointment on the bad. If it's an enjoyable listen, it's an enjoyable listen.



Jeff is just creative with his excuses. I'd re-assert from the paragraphs above, there was nothing for Jeff to defend against, but to the extent that his is, Billy has always operated as a musical dictator, writing and playing nearly every instrument short of the drums.

A lot of people enjoy easy listening pop rock. The critics by and large are blaming their own lack of musical flexibility on the band, and/or using their bully pulpit to settle a score with the artist, and while I'm sure this is not a rare occurrence in general, it couldn't be more true of MTaE.

This seems a bit of an over-reaction. If you read up thread I actually posted my original 2014 review of Monuments, in which I basically say it's solid and enjoyable. I did criticize it today for not pushing boundaries, but I've never said that makes it especially flawed. As for "You say it doesn't sound different enough, but one of the common criticism of the reformed band was that they sounded too different", I've never criticized SP for that, in print or elsewhere. If you look at my Shiny and Oh So Bright vol 1 write up from a few weeks ago it's the songs that don't sound like SP1 I praised most.

As for "Those critiques are expedient pretexts to justify a forgone conclusion. "... I never approach a record with a foregone conclusion. Every day is Christmas Eve. Go and read my actual contempory review.

And I'll defend my view by the way: Monuments is not an especially creative record by SP standards. That doesn't make it a BAD record.

You're a bit touchy about Monuments To An Elegy, aren't you?

[MonumentsRocks]

Originally Posted by Razor Star

This seems a bit of an over-reaction. If you read up thread I actually posted my original 2014 review of Monuments, in which I basically say it's solid and enjoyable. I did criticize it today for not pushing boundaries, but I've never said that makes it especially flawed. As for "You say it doesn't sound different enough, but one of the common criticism of the reformed band was that they sounded too different", I've never criticized SP for that, in print or elsewhere. If you look at my Shiny and Oh So Bright vol 1 write up from a few weeks ago it's the songs that don't sound like SP1 I praised most.

As for "Those critiques are expedient pretexts to justify a forgone conclusion. "... I never approach a record with a foregone conclusion. Every day is Christmas Eve. Go and read my actual contempory review.

And I'll defend my view by the way: Monuments is not an especially creative record by SP standards. That doesn't make it a BAD record.

You're a bit touchy about Monuments for an Elegy, aren't you?

You're supposing that I should be familiar with your earlier review. Just as people should take MTaE on its own merits, I took your post on it's own merits.

I don't believe you originated many/all of the stated critiques, I think you're repeating the "talking points" about the album, the chinks in the album's armor that everyone has seized upon to write it off. My post isn't so much directed at your critique as it is directed towards all of them, and I tried to word it in a way that reflects that.

Regardless of whether the subject is MTaE, or Machina, art critique has dubious merits in the first place. Im not motivated by a love of MTaE as much as I'm motivated by a disgust of mass delusion.

[FoolofaTook]

Originally Posted by Razor Star

You're a bit touchy about Monuments To An Elegy, aren't you?

yes it's part of his persona

(HE'S A TROLL)

[Mals Marola]

not a troll

just a man with a good ol'-fashioned healthy obsession w/ MANUMINTS

[MonumentsRocks]

Originally Posted by Mals Marola

Either that or we would have just gotten Zwan under the SP moniker

I'm certain fans would have HATED Mary Star of the Sea had it been an SP album. Billy blames the band break up on James and whoever else, but I wonder if he really just knew he was planning to go in a musical direction that would alienate SP fans. Like he saw what happened with Adore and decided it was better to just hit the pause button on the SP brand.

[FoolofaTook]

once he was a man yes. but then he sold his inner flame/soul to morgorth, who cast him deep into the dungeons of thangorodrim, where far from the light his soul and shape were warped and twisted into an evil form: A TROLL!

[Mals Marola]

i see

well in that case, allow me to sound the alarms:

[Razor Star]

Originally Posted by MonumentsRocks

You're supposing that I should be familiar with your earlier review. Just as people should take MTaE on its own merits, I took your post on it's own merits.

I mean it's literally the next post down on the thread. I kinda resent you think I parrot other peoples opinions in my writing, even subconsciously. And to defend my fellow critics, Monuments gets a far rougher ride from a lot of fans than it did in reviews, which were broadly positive.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Zer0 Hour

Monuments was received poorly because it fucking blows, no matter how much you personally like bullshit like “Anti-Hero.”

the album fucking sucks. it's not even the most offensively bad collection of material Corgan has put out, it's just absolutely the most empty hollow shell which makes it by far the worst LP from him

[FoolofaTook]

yea there's no way in hell i'd ever listen to that turd. 20 seconds of run2me was enough for me.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Razor Star

I mean it's literally the next post down on the thread. I kinda resent you think I parrot other peoples opinions in my writing, even subconsciously. And to defend my fellow critics, Monuments gets a far rougher ride from a lot of fans than it did in reviews, which were broadly positive.

In case you are unfamiliar with MonumentsRock, he has some kind of neuroticism about other people's opinions where he can't just debate quality from different points of view that value different things, he has to try and logically undermine whatever premises you are working with to show you that your opinion is WRONG

and if that doesn't work, he'll offer some psychobabble about groupthink and how anyone who doesn't share his opinion is trying to pass off some kind of identity

[redbreegull]

Basically, his whole thing is a thinly veiled deflection of his own deep insecurities and inability to justify his own feelings to himself

[Razor Star]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

Basically, his whole thing is a thinly veiled deflection of his own deep insecurities and inability to justify his own feelings to himself

I can see why the work of Billy Corgan would appeal.