When will we admit Shiny rules?

[NovaFritz]

OK, maybe not rules. But this will likely go down as the only reunion album that actually sounds like a band playing together. I am very happy they made it.

Thank you Rick Rubin for letting the band play.

[VoxUpDoc]

Originally Posted by NovaFritz

OK, maybe not rules. But this will likely go down as the only reunion album that actually sounds like a band playing together. I am very happy they made it.

Thank you Rick Rubin for letting the band play.

We moaned about Shiny, but then Billy took us all to synth town for 50 tracks…

[LaBelle]

Shiny made me feel physical pain when I first heard it.
Yuck

[TheAlter]

I have no problem admitting that Slavery Sometimes is better, a hell of a lot better than this utter fuckclownshitmusic and bundled podcast.

[ilikeplanets]

Knights of Malta. That's all I have to say.

[ninsp]

Silvery Sometimes is good. Marchin' On has Billy's proper vocals. That's it.

[Joey Goldberg]

Silvery, With Sympathy & Marchin' are keepers

throw in live recording of Solara & you got a pretty reputable SP3 EP

[Ram27]

check the receipts i've always said knights of malta ruled live

[NovaFritz]

Originally Posted by Joey Goldberg

Silvery, With Sympathy & Marchin' are keepers

throw in live recording of Solara & you got a pretty reputable SP3 EP

Exactly. And you can hear Jimmy and James.

[phang]

Yeah no problem with Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. No Hope. No Vote. No Fat Chicks. No Homers.

Silvery, Marchin' On and With Sympathy are good songs which I like to revisit, and the rest of the album just carries along with it.

[LaBelle]

She stabs the empty clock.

[T&T]

She haunts you where you're not


deep stuff.

[enthusaroo]

for me Shiny sucks ass.. y'all on some weird nostalgia trip..

Zeitgeist is 50x better than Shiny (were there 1 or 2 parts? can't even remember)

[phang]

Originally Posted by enthusaroo

for me Shiny sucks ass.. y'all on some weird nostalgia trip..

Zeitgeist is 50x better than Shiny (were there 1 or 2 parts? can't even remember)

Yeah I mean I don't think anyone is looking back on Shiny Long Title as a band classic. Folk are pretty much just saying it's decent enough with a few good tracks, which it is. It's fine.

It could have been worse, which in modern Pumpkins style means it's a smash hit.

[TheSultanOfCyr]

Originally Posted by phang

Yeah I mean I don't think anyone is looking back on Shiny Long Title as a band classic.

Bold of you to assume. I think yr forgetting a little someone.

[Modern90's]

Marchin' On made every one cum a bit just for the fact that billy pulled out his machina vocal style.

The album as a whole is meh, Knight of Malta is an awful fucking track though and was shocking to hear at first.

Solara is much better live than on the album

[Baffler_Meal]

Originally Posted by Modern90's

Marchin' On made every one cum a bit just for the fact that billy pulled out his machina vocal style.

The album as a whole is meh, Knight of Malta is an awful fucking track though and was shocking to hear at first.

Solara is much better live than on the album

Marchin' On isn't horrible. Could be better, but there is a lot to like, especially compared to the rest of the album.

Knights of Malta is embarrassing. Early clownshit era.

My wife hates the Pumpkins but she went with me to see the Shiny tour in Baltimore. She thought Solara was good live, especially with the SUN video.

[eviltimeban]

The album should've been two EPs, would've sat a bit better. As it is the sequencing is all over the place, and it needed one more song. Plus there's too many Jimmy loops used.

[New Art Rioter]

Marchin' On sounds fucking fantastic compared to the past 5 years!

[Raskolnikov]

Very valid points in this thread.

Maybe the fact that it's Billy and Howard that are crapping up lots of stuff lately and preventing it from sounding like a band? Zero percent of any dissent spoken against recording?

And yeah - listening to Marchin' On for the first time in a while - and yeah, it's solid.

If a cut like this showed up on the Atum podcast, we would immediately have a fan favorite from the album. Real guitar riff. Real Jimmy drums. Cool guitar effects that sound like they could be James playing for the last 30 seconds or so there.

Said it in another thread, but yeah - will tack on here that With Sympathy and Silvery Sometimes are top shelf 2007-present SP.

[TheSultanOfCyr]

The Culling had some moments that made my ears perk up a bit. I’m not going to listen to anything more than once until the full thing is out but I’m hoping that more tracks stand out like this when I listen in full. Thus far, first three tracks are very strong, and there’s some good stuff scattered about the rest of the track list. Cautiously optimistic.

[New Art Rioter]

Is pretty funny Marchin' On got such a good reception from the fans at the time only to be instantly relegated to the "we will never play this live" pile

[TheSultanOfCyr]

Marchin' On is to SP3 what As Rome Burns was to SP2.

[LoveIsSuicide42]

Shiny doesn't feel like a real album to me really. It's so short and not very cohesive and the quality is all over the place. It doesn't really have a "sound", the production is dry as hell, and the handful of really good ideas that are here don't really develop as much as they should. The Pumpkins are best when they sound lush or muddy and this feels brittle and clean. Plenty of takes along these lines already.

Silvery Sometimes, With Sympathy, and Marchin' On are all very good; that seems to be the consensus.

Silvery Sometimes and With Sympathy are just solid, well written songs-- Marchin' On is kinda meh in that way, but the band does sound legit on this track. I love how they let loose near the end, but it feels like such a tease of what they can do. But yeah-- those three songs deserve some recognition for being worthy of the SP name.

Some seriously bad trends started elsewhere on this album, however. Travels is one of the first pumpkins songs to feel like a giant, insipid blob that goes absolutely nowhere. It's kind of pretty and it can evoke some emotion, but it's so flat and dry sounding it's almost shocking The lyrics are also so repetitive and bland. The yearning, straightforward stuff is great at times but this is serious overkill. Knights of Malta and Alienation are both corny as hell and fail at sounding epic, though it feels like they're trying. It's so gross that one of the first things we hear on the album are those Billy "woahohoohohohohh's". Solara sounds completely uninspired and bloated in the studio. Seek and You Shall Destroy has annoying vocals and the riff is butt.

That being said, I like it more than Monuments. I feel like SP has been on a slow upward trajectory since monuments, but I seem to be in the minority there. One thing I notice is that there seems to be a lot of agreeance over what's actually good on Shiny. I don't see that same thing with Cyr or Atum. Maybe that's just because they are newer, but I think it's a sign that they will actually age pretty strongly.

[Raskolnikov]

Originally Posted by TheSultanOfCyr

Marchin' On is to SP3 what As Rome Burns was to SP2.

Nah... As Rome Burns got played a bunch. From what I can tell, Marchin' On hasn't ever been played and it's super safe to say at this point it will NEVER be played.

But, both good jams for sure. ARB (first time that has ever been used?) was great at the show I saw in 2011.

[Ram27]

Originally Posted by LoveIsSuicide42

The Pumpkins are best when they sound lush or muddy and this feels brittle and clean.

perfect description. last 10 years of sp in a sentence

i don't know why people are so obsessed with sounding clean. i don't repeat a song over and over because the fucking snare tone sounded even. i like weird hummers from 94 where the tape is slightly too fast and the guitar bounces off the walls of the room in a certain way and it sounds super blissed out

[LoveIsSuicide42]

Originally Posted by Ram27

i don't know why people are so obsessed with sounding clean. i don't repeat a song over and over because the fucking snare tone sounded even.

I wonder if it might partially come from a mindset to producing that isn't really focused on how the music sounds coming out of headphones, but more along the lines of how music sounds coming out of cell phone speakers and other lower grade speakers? I mean, if you're trying to show something to a friend, a quick way to do that is to play a song on your phone. Or, if you're playing to a larger group of people for whatever reason, that also becomes an element. Maybe that sounds kind of ridiculous but a super cleanly produced, evenly layered thing is going to sound more like it is "supposed to" coming of those kinds of speakers than a really muddy, textured track will sound like it is "supposed to." Maybe this wouldn't be something that was done intentionally, but something that just kind of took shape over time as cell phones changed how music is listened to and popular songs just started taking on those characteristics.

[New Art Rioter]

Corgan would absolutely take that sort of shit into account in his quest to be king of the charts/radio again, those kind of decisions that ultimately impact the quality of the work in favour of "competing" I think probably started with the Zwan brickwalling

[eviltimeban]

I don't know why producers / mixers aren't creating mono mixes for every album now. People who are listening on JBL type single / smart speakers are getting a stereo mix squashed into one channel.

[TheSultanOfCyr]

Originally Posted by New Art Rioter

Corgan would absolutely take that sort of shit into account in his quest to be king of the charts/radio again

This is precisely my problem with current SP. I feel that Bill is stuck between wanting to do whatever he wants and yet he also wants to tailor his work to be commercially viable.

I think the backlash to SP2 did much to instil that feeling into him. Aegea was cool because he was doing something he found interesting without regard for how it would be received. Likewise for the 2007/8 tours, which was one of the best live iterations of the Pumpkins because risks were being taken and new stuff was being tried. The disappointment of fans in the SP2 era, unfortunately, I think really got to him.

He shelved all of Chicago Kid because his label didn’t like it. That’s a whole album just hidden away, and yet he has flippantly called it his best work.

He currently seems to be quite intent on attaining the ‘modern sound’. He wants to be current and he wants to appeal to the mainstream. But he’s making 33 song albums. He’s stuck in between a rock and a hard place with this strategy. A self-professed contrarian trying to push into the mainstream.

He relegated Shiny 3 to Atum bonus tracks. Why? Because he thought nobody would care about these songs? Because they’re not commercially viable, not a part of a ‘sustainable business model’?

Adore and Machina were risky, hell, even Mellon Collie was, and he knew it, but he was ultimately doing what he wanted. It didn’t feel like compromise. It kinda does now.