'James Iha - Look to the Sky' 2021 Appreciation Spectacular

[VoxUpDoc]

1. Make Believe
2. To Who Knows Where
3. Gemini
4. Speed Of Love
5. Til Next Tuesday
6. Summer Days
7. Appetite
8. Dream Tonight
9. New Years Day
10. Waves
11. A String of Words
12. 4th of July
13. Dark Star
14. Diamond Eyes
15. Stay Lost



In the 'rank the albums' thread a few people had this on their "Haven't listened to" pile, probably - cba to check. The early tracks and singles have a Machina 2 "Go" vibe, which blends into Let It Come Down chilled folk indie. All of the bonus tracks are great so be sure to add them to your tracklist. The production is... the opposite of whatever Billy has been doing. So if you haven't heard it or haven't heard it in a while, it's the best post-2000 Pumpkins album, it's approaching the 10th anniversary. 'Run To Me' approved. Enjoy.

[The New]

Yeah it's dope. Just del Apetite from said tracklist and go get lost.

[thomas_bland]

Appetite is ace.

[Corgan's Bluff]

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/S2...44-h544-l90-rj

Complete album on the YouTube-Music Channel:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?l...YiKIEseboPa9MM


James Iha giving comments on each song:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?l...jsZob5N5iEh-fk

[Reyngel]

What’s weird… the first copy do that album that I had had a different track order, and was mixed differently. Waves faded right into Speed of Love, just as James says his original intention was in the Commentary thing. But I can never find that version of the album anymore. Anyone know any details?

[VoxUpDoc]

Originally Posted by Reyngel

What’s weird… the first copy do that album that I had had a different track order, and was mixed differently. Waves faded right into Speed of Love, just as James says his original intention was in the Commentary thing. But I can never find that version of the album anymore. Anyone know any details?

That is the original rip I have in my iTunes.

But I also have the western release on CD. Never checked for alternative mixing tbh. Assumed it was mostly the same except for New Year’s Day and the bonus tracks.

The second release flows better.

[run2pee]

There's more emotion in this record than anything big willie's done since adore

[run2pee]

It really is fantastic. The vibe is like gentle oddness with some flashes of psychedelic blissout. It will probably be my album of the summer.

[run2pee]

Was there a tour or anything for this? Someone please come in and dump the whole thing on me. Ready to bathe in this one for awhile. If someone can just add a little hot water from time to time, thanks

[run2pee]

i really love "appetite"

what a strange stoned frog of a munchies song

[run2pee]

Just snagged the vinyl off discogs, thank f it's not too rare yet

[run2pee]

It's been over a decade since both Billy Corgan and James Iha could call themselves members of the Smashing Pumpkins, and now they've finally got something else in common: It's 2012 and they're both sorta acting like it's still 1998. Yet this tenuous link becomes an exception that proves the rule. While Corgan is still airing out grudges and resentments against any and all bands that ticked him off and fans who had the gall to stop buying his records after Adore, Iha is calmly going about the business of releasing what sounds like a logical follow-up to Let It Come Down, his solo record which celebrated its 14th birthday this year*.* This clearly has the potential to work out better for Iha. Bands who sound and sell like Smashing Pumpkins don't exist anymore, and the leveling of the playing field has allowed artists to become stars even while making the sort of modest music Iha favored on Let It Come Down: peaceful, easy California folk-rock, dewy AM-radio pop. From the sounds of Look to the Sky, Iha does want to be a star. Unfortunately it's on 1998's terms, and he's prepared with bafflingly outdated alt-rock songs that could comfortably sidle between choice cuts from Marcy Playground and Semisonic and get their asses handed to them.

It didn't have to end up like this. Iha's built up a lot of goodwill over the years simply by not being Billy Corgan, and if you're amenable to the sort of KROQ-friendly alt he abetted in A Perfect Circle and attempted as part of Tinted Windows, there are moments that can press your Buzz Bin joy buzzer. Check the whooshing raygun effects from "Speed of Love", the meek and unexpected female harmonies on "Make Believe", and you'll be able to overlook his rhyming, "You rush in with stars in your hair/ You cast your spell and float through the air," in the first damn line. Plus, you hear those chiming, flanged arpeggios on "To Who Knows Where" and it starts triggering memories of songs like "Believe" and "The Boy", very strong Iha B-sides that admittedly wouldn't have fit anywhere on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness like the comparatively limp "Farewell & Goodnight" or "Take Me Down" did. Besides, there is precedent for this kind of thing being done quite well and quite recently. After all, wasn't the Pains of Being Pure at Heart's Flood-produced Belong a document of alternate history where Iha took the controls of the Pumpkins ca. Mellon Collie for about 40 minutes? It's almost frightening how close some of Look to the Sky resembles Belong, though Iha mostly favors the mid-tempo, big-chorus stuff (i.e., "The Body", "Even in Dreams") and the album's one very unfortunate genre experiment ("Appetite") is the sort of baritone burlesque piano maundering Scott Weiland attempted at his most far-gone on "Lady, Your Roof Brings Me Down". Weiland's was much better.

You can engage in this sort of cautiously optimistic evaluation process for about 10 minutes, after which the music of Look to the Sky just does not matter. I'd feel more comfortable telling you Iha has nothing to say here. The problem is that he does, and it's mostly just sad to see the cruel strictures of rhyme scheme cause someone to sing things he would almost certainly never think or speak. It might sound strange to bring up Iha's lyrics as unacceptable considering that, with all due respect, the bar's not really all that high in this field. Some might just go ahead and say that "I'm traveling at the speed of love/ And sooner and later I'll be crashing" is not a lyric that should emerge from the mouth of a grown-ass man. I'll give Iha the benefit of the doubt and say "twee" doesn't really have an age limit, though the frequency of song titles like "Summer Days", "New Years Day", "Make Believe", and oh yes, "Speed of Love" tests patience merely by appearing on one's iPod.

My bigger issue is that those aren't the kind of lyrics that should be coming from a guy who clearly knows how to put a song together and might've been sitting on these ones for the better part of a decade and a half. When Pains' Kip Berman sings an iffy lyric like "Tell me again what the body's for/ 'Cause I can't feel it any more" on "The Body", the sentiment and emotional content is understandable even if you might want to phrase it differently. I can't even really give Iha's lyrics the dignity of cliché because clichés are truth for the most part. Most of this stuff has a strange aggression in its refusal to even bother making any sense. Here's the intro triplet on "Waves": "Waves wash over me/ Drag me out to sea/ A tide pours slow-ow-ly," but wait... how are the waves washing over him if he's not already out to sea? Iha has no time for your follow-up questions, pressing in a maudlin deeper register: "Tonight I feel so alone/ Tonight I've wandered far from home." Got that? And, for God's sake, does he really rhyme the title of "Till Next Tuesday" with "close the door till it's news-day?" Even with that bashful voice of his, the words become impossible to ignore and these aren't songs so much as a kind of mental tennis game where Iha serves and you put yourself in position to volley with a guess at the most obvious and often correct rhyme. "Gemini" becomes a highlight by default as it's about the only song here that doesn't adhere to a strict AA/BB pattern.

The content is disheartening enough, but it's the context of Look to the Sky that makes it pitiable. Maybe slap some preset beats on it and trade out some of the guitars for synths of Gushers-like sickly sweetness, attribute it to a post-Owl City new jack rather than a well-known guitarist from a 90s alt-rock titan, and you might have something that all of a sudden shows up in Billboard's Top 20 without your having any idea where the fuck they came from. But in the aforementioned leveled playing field, Iha gets exposed-- Look to the Sky expresses so little that could be considered real or truthful that it couldn't have been created out of some sort of emotional necessity and is aiming for radio formats that no longer exist. Or, to paraphrase the most withering putdown of 1998, 99% of its fans don't exist.

[run2pee]

Fuck you, ian cohen, u dumb dick

[run2pee]

https://madaboutthearts.files.wordpr...689682_640.jpg

fuck your v neck asshole

and your hat is dumb

and your glasses

and your insights are not insights, and u r not cool, u only wish your album was good as jims ihas

[run2pee]

Talkin i can just hear this choad mansplain to us from out the silent jpeg there, can u not

[VoxUpDoc]

Andy Falkous’ takedown of Ian Cohen was glorious.

[Joey Goldberg]

Originally Posted by Run To Me

fuck your v neck asshole

and your hat is dumb

and your glasses

and your insights are not insights, and u r not cool, u only wish your album was good as jims ihas

Is that an extract from Billy’s memoir?

[Joey Goldberg]

run 2 meeeee

run 2 ME

run 2 meeeee



run 2 me

[run2pee]

Mals i noticed that u, like me, listed this record in your havent heard pile

This is a mistake, it is excellent

[Joey Goldberg]

i believe it

i liked the title track a lot when that came out

if there was a tier list called "I'll get around to it," i surely would have inserted it there

[smashingjj]

well that's the only time anyone mentioned Owl City as a reference to anything

[smashingjj]

who is Ian Cohen and what did Falkous say about him

[smashingjj]

I don't know how to use google

[Joey Goldberg]

he's the singer of The Stone Roses, idiot

[VoxUpDoc]

Originally Posted by smashingjj

who is Ian Cohen and what did Falkous say about him

Shorthand:

"Allow me to efuckidate in an easy-to-understand fuck-by-point manner – you stupid cunt"

Longhand:

How To Respond To A Pitchfork Review

Also the song Robocop 4 namechecked in this rant makes a reference to Billy Corgan, so we've come full circle.

[smashingjj]

ahahah, good stuff, thanks!

[smashingjj]

fun story: I saw FotL on All Tomorrow's Parties years ago and talked to him afterwards. he had this rant where he said fuck you to everyone who was torrenting the album before it had come out.

I told him I torrented the album and didn't really like it. He laughed and said he appreciated my balls. I said I appreciate them too.

[smashingjj]

Originally Posted by Joey Goldberg

he's the singer of The Stone Roses, idiot

look, Goldberg, I don't want to get into this right now, let's settle this later, once and for all, yes?

[Joey Goldberg]

Forget that, I can end this right now with a simple statement:

Allow me to efuckidate in an easy-to-understand fuck-by-point manner – you stupid cunt

[deadlecturer]

Hey you guys I just gave this a listen. It's def splendid and far better than anything SP did in last two decades. It's like if James got a solo song on Adore wow.