smashing pumpkins -- pisces iscariot: classic or dud?

I reviewed PI for my student newspaper, a joint review with a girl who had bloody apalling taste in music but who I rather fancied. So I'm ashamed to admit to my FT readership that I let my journalistic integrity be UTTERLY COMPROMISED and I wrote not only some faintly favourable things about it but I also did it in the floweriest prose I could muster, which impressed her marginally but not (thankfully I think now) enough. The harsh lesson one of music journalism was learned: nobody will cop off with you because of what you write in a pop review.

Anyway, I vaguely remember this B-Sides collection from the Official Worst Band In The World (blame the readers, not I) being much less bad than their actual albums but still a bit of an interest vacuum. DUD.

That said, it's fragmented but wonderful and a half. ;-)

the stripped-down simplicity of these songs works magnificently, as my main obstacles to liking most sp stuff are the obnoxious guitar leads and arena-rock theatrics (though i just started rediscovering _siamese dream_ so so much for that, maybe). the ballads, which take up at least half the album, nearly reach perfection sometimes: fragile, haunting, Beatlesque in the case of "blew away." corgan's voice hadn't yet deepened to a croak and was still a glorious light, androgynous, temperamental, nuanced, vulnerable instrument. "landslide" almost always choked me up when i was 15. the guitar lines on these tracks are masterful. the primitive rock tunes carry all the immediacy and excitement of the scrawny teenager in the basement who's realized his revenge through rock.

Gish: the You Can Tune a Piano... for the '90s Siamese Dream: the Agent Provocateur for the '90s Mellon Collie: the Tusk for the '90s

Sorry, I haven't heard any Pumpkins post-Mellon. Tangentially, I'm still recovering from a moment years back when I went to listen to the Grunge Beatles/Backbeat disc and was greeted with the opening notes of Cherub Rock. I got Silverfuck instead of Good Golly Miss Molly, and Today instead of Bad Boy. Nice one, Virgin.

Smashing Pumpkins: The grunge Limp Bizkit?

Maybe I just have a thing for its more lo-fi production style, but Iscariot really seems like the roller coaster ride that Siamese only wishes it was. I mean, Frail and Bedazzled is better than every song on SD except Mayonnaise. It has more spirit, better solos, a catcher melody, (I could go on about the album but I'll choose not to)...Contrary to his own and popular belief Billy was at his best just tossing things off. That's the poignant irony of his Pavement kissoff, Cherub Rock. A little more Indie Rock would have saved the man's soul.

Best song on Pisces is "Obscured." That percussion sound + Billy's voice at its dreamiest(!).

I love the Pumpkins but MCIS comes nowhere near anything remotely considered classic. I mean where do the Pumpkins approach Soul Survivor, or Let it Loose, or Tumbling Dice or Torn and Frayed? Nowhere; Billy could not do it, he didn't have the verve.

As far as Soma vs. Mayonnaise, Soma has Billy's best guitar solo anywhere except for Starla (ambition was not good for Billy, but excess....) and the melody's pretty but too blunt. Ditto with the lyrics. Mayonnaise is lighter and the melody is more playful, and to steal from M. Prindle, that squawk that comes in in the middle of the chorus absolutely rules. i'd say Soma was the 2nd best track on SD but shares a little in that sort of ambitious blandness that the whole album suffers from.

You're right about Obscured though. Absolutely angelic track.

nailed it. i also recal blissfully drifting to sleep everynight for weeks to the "landslide" / "starla" section of the album. i gotta go dig this up.

just a personal, unrelated factoid: my older sister was hanging out with corgan daily, roughly at this time. He signed a copy of 'Pisces..' for me, which is somewhere around here...lucky me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPOv3iyy1qo

sundar has NEVER HEARD pet sounds??????

jesus, gish is alright, sort of catchy in parts, but pretty limited

siamese dream is obviously the most accomplished, lush, captivating thing they ever put out. adore is also pretty moving in parts, and their second best record, i think.

listened to this pisces thing a few times back in the day. sort of alright

is this album the good pumpkins (quiet, melancholy, sentimental) or the bad pumpkins (mindless guitar rawk with heavy, forgettable riffs that go nowhere)?

good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good good

yeah this is the only one i've played since like 1996. pretty much classic.

which songs would you compare the sound to?

it's kind of in its own little world, really - it's all Gish and Siamese era material but it's more varied sonically than either of those albums. If you like the dreamy side of the pumpkins you need this album ("Obscured" is their dreamiest & best song with great sighs from the Corgz, and the heavy rockers are full of psyched-out goodness)

the dreamy stuff ("33", "1979", "Mayonnaise", "Tonight, Tonight") is best. The worst is crap like "Jellybelly" and all that faceless pseudometal bullshit sthat littered the whole 'Melancholy' album.

i'm awful with song titles, but it's got a bit of the quiet melancholia and guitar rawk -- but I rate the three or four rockers on here above a lot of the ones on SD and what I remember from MC&TIS (Frail & Bedazzled, Pissant, Sandoz)

xxpost

(but i know what yr talking about wrt forgettable riffs going nowhere)

this shit couldn't even keep my attention when i was super-into this band, and that was like 13 years ago

To me SP is a very good singles band (maybe a couple non-singles like "Mayonnaise"), but everything else is completely disposable. But then I haven't heard this AMAZING ALBUM THAT'S GOING TO CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER

it's probably not going to change your life forever, but it's the best smashing pumpkins album

interesting. I remember middling reviews at the time, which is why i never bothered buying it.

Did "Eye" ever show up on an album?

Nope, just the hits album.

I say classic, if only for "Starla", "Obscured", "Frail and Bedazzled" and "La Dolly Vita".

hey, the 1st thread I ever posted to...:)

absolute classic...pumpkins at their most lo-fi & hookah-woozy. even the RAWKers sound dreamy...Frail & Bedazzled and Hello Kitty Kat are absolute classics...as well as Obscured, Plume, Whir, Starla, La Dolly Vita, Spaced...

After having given it some thought, I kind of see where sundar was going with his initial post. Pet Sounds is a concept album about the innocence of childhood is it not? and the struggle to preserve it. A lot of these songs are about the same thing but updates the context for the grunge era (=world not just perplexing but also hostile). Example: Frail and Bedazzled sounds to my ears like it tells the story of a young boy going through a painful divorce. I don't know if this makes PI peculiar in the Pumpkins' catalogue; preserving one's innocence in a hostile world is pretty much a trademark theme for Corgan's songs.

Whatever. Best Pumpkins album, fer sure.

...a young boy getting divorced from his child bride. now that is some hard-hitting material, bro.

LOL yeah, i'm a moron...the divorce is his parents' obv.

hey abbott: they're using 'eye' for the watchmen (?? i think?? i was watching a whole bunch of previews on hulu).

also: curtis' description of PI otm

Not "Eye" -- the slow version of "The End is the Beginning" etc.

duh i'm an idiot - for some reason i always get those two songs mixed up

i think 'eye' is on rotten apples?

eye is on the lost highway sdtrk, i think

this is on my top 15 alltime albums list...PI's only flaw = no drown or glynis

I really can't believe I've only now actually sat down and listened to this album - good lord is it great. Starla! Pissant! Everything else! Great great great, and a huge treat. I love getting around to good albums by beloved bands fairly late, it's like this surprise treasure trove.

I had forgotten this even existed. Will definitely give it a try.

yea this album is a comforting thing for me. i put it on sundays sometimes when you need that caress followed by asskicking to shake off the saturday [soothe frailandbedazzled]

listening to this jam atm

got me a raygun, got me an altitude

this was either fourth I think on my all-time metal ballot

either

I was full of shit five years ago btw...Soma is a classic song; there's quite a few of those on SD (other ones: Quiet, Rocket, Today, Hummer). I still don't like Cherub Rock or Disarm or Spaceboy/Silverfuck, but that still leaves enough on SD to make up a pretty decent album...

has anyone heard the bonus disc? is it worth checking out?

Its definitely worth checking out, there's a lot of great stuff. However, if you were an obsessive back in the 90s, there isn't a whole ton of new material. It's cleaned up and much cripser than the original demos that were floating around (Real Time demos, the WZRD stuff, etc). You've got the "Cinnamn Girl", "Jackie Blue", and "Venus in Furs" covers, cleaned up "By June", "Glynis" (from No Alternative), and other pretty well shared stuff. The only real revelation to my ears was the 15 minute studio demo, "Why Am I So Tired", which sounds great.

Pitchfork's review is, er, smashing.

lol, it is great to see people still stanning for the classic material despite the trainwreck the band is now.

I totally need to get this

"Whirl" is the one that most impressed me today.

It's definitely not up there with Gish, Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, but then I wouldn't have ever expected it to be. It's definitely as far from dud as you can possibly get without reaching classic.

Got my copy earlier in the week, will be giving it all a proper ear this weekend. The cassette demo's good fun to see.

bummer there isn't more siamese dream outtake material, like cleaned up versions of some of those demos that leaked a few years ago. the heavier "set the ray to jerry" for example

The only real revelation to my ears was the 15 minute studio demo, "Why Am I So Tired", which sounds great.

― heated debate over derpy hooves (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hasn't this already been released on Earphoria, or is it a different take?

You know, I'm not sure if its the same or not. That track never played on my copy of Earphoria for some reason, it would always skip from the day I bought it, so I'm not sure I ever heard the full thing.

Liner notes seem to indicate it's the same. Similarly "Slunk" is the Japanese TV performance from said collection as well. Kinda odd that those are thrown in as ringers, I agree.

Just listened to/ripped the cassette demo. Might be my copy but "Jennifer Ever" sounds kinda muddy as does "East" for halfway through, when it suddenly and clearly brightens up for the rest of the tape.

That I couldn't confirm either because, as I learned last night, I no longer have a single way in my house to listen to cassettes. Ha. Still love that that was included though!

bummer there isn't more siamese dream outtake material, like cleaned up versions of some of those demos that leaked a few years ago. the heavier "set the ray to jerry" for example

In the absence of that

http://thepumpkins.net/music/647-music-quiet-and-other-songs

Meantime, as I just posted on the Frogs thread, here's their take on Pumpkins songs from a 1997 rehearsal:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL345D3F4CAFD406A5&feature=edit_ok

love that version of Rhinoceros

yeah that version is great

(seventeen years ago)

is it still your fave?

yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnjegcYZVfs

Hadn't listened to that song in years and got goosebumps the whole way through. Thanks for the thread bump, Curtis. I'm gonna have to dive back into PI. Starla has my favorite Corgan guitar and Blew Away is maybe James' best song.

Hello Kitty Kat is an awesome song, so brutal, & it came very close to being on Siamese Dream (in place of or after Quiet iirc). the promo cassettes of SD have Hello Kitty Kat on them, and it's a different mix than the one on PI.

record rules, still stunning what a prolific & consistently great songwriter Billy was in the Pumpkins' prime

xp yeah Blew Away is the only James song that I listen to (somewhat) regularly. The Boy is pretty cool too - here's a sick live version from a Starchildren show from June 1994. it's a lot faster than the one on TAFH: https://archive.org/details/tsp1994-06-18.shn/tsp1994-06-18t04.shn - also there's a pretty sweet cover of Cars. that's a cool show. early version of Here is No Why, too.

Neither classic or dud, but has some stunning must-hear moments on it.

Damn, the outro to Obscured is so gorgeous.

Ahhh, "Whir"....still gorgeous and the lyrics have meant different things to me as I've gotten older.

Yeah, 'Whir' is easily one of my favourites. That and 'Frail and Bedazzled' ...

speaking of which

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bcvnO-rvjA

Yep still the best one

Yeah, incredible how Billy was not only prolific, but kept hitting the mark with almost every song he wrote in the '90s. At some point the quality control went and he just became prolific.

even the songs he threw away were brilliant, "Methusela" being the best example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JufC-dp5Sw

Cool album IMO

Browsing at Amoeba, I came across a sealed copy of the deluxe reissue (2CD / 1DVD) for $18.98, and bought it on a whim. Did I do good?

It's worth the price for 'Frail and Bedazzled' and 'Starla' alone!

Did it come with the demo cassette

The back cover does list "First ever SP demo reproduced on cassette" among the inclusions...

There's a lot of people in the hardcore that really like their very early work from the late '80s, the pre-Gish stuff. I can't really say I'm one of 'em. That early TV appearance where they play a lot of early material is still worth a watch, though, just as a comparison point between then and Gish.

Although it's kinda sad to compare it to footage of the Arising! tour for a number of reasons. D'arcy's appearance being one of 'em.

there are some fantastic riffs among the pre-Gish stuff but yeah not much in the way of good entire songs... I like “under your spell” and “there is goes” though. Were those both Marked tunes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rr7th61VOk

'There It Goes' isn't too bad. I think the Oceania-era line-up did a one-off performance of that one just for a select couple of people, but I might be misremembering and it may be a completely different song. Look at how young and fresh-faced they all look in that 1988 video, though - even Jimmy - although he's very restrained on the early stuff. D'arcy looks cool (and cute) as hell.

Fast forward 11 years later...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x20kajCVzTM

Opened it up, the tape is pretty cool-looking... wish I still had a cassette deck

none of them are Marked songs, those can be found elsewhere... I think when Billy started SP he threw everything he had away. I've listened to some of that Marked stuff, it's pretty bad. there are some good songs among the pre-Gish material. definitely There It Goes, She, Under Your Spell, Razor, I Am My End...

Mashed Potatoes remains an extremely fun listen, imo

oh, one of the best. "Cinder" is killer, I always wondered where that was recorded, why there's no other documentation of that song, and why an unrelated song was put out on the PI reissue called "Cinder Open" or something. only the Pumpkins would let something like that die as a almost never played live rarity.

'Cinder' has a great riff, if I remember. That's the one where part of it ended up in 'Silverfuck', right? There's few bands out there that inspire me to hear not just all the officially released recorded work, but the bootlegs and outtakes etc., but the Pumpkins are definitely one of 'em.

we’ve never seen the deeep live silverfucks 95-96 all laid out right? i saw (and recorded, and traded) a bunch of them back then and just a few months apart it changed so much, just whole new avenues into song, n ight-to-night variations on themes

sounds wanky as shit but in person? powerful

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with this band, but the quality of their leftovers from the 90s is undeniable. I could do a POX just from b-sides.

I’ll expand on this thought tomorrow (maybe) but Gish and the bsides from both this album and “aeroplane…” contain in retrospective my favorite moments from them.

Yes! I went down a Pumpkins rabbit-hole in the last week after Bang Bang You're Dead... POLL In Your Head - ILM Artist Poll #87 - SMASHING PUMPKINS - Results was revived. In the 1990s, I had signed off from the Pumpkins in the wake of their Siamese Dream ubiquity. Just too many views of the Disarm video on MTV. When I was schooling myself for the poll though, Pisces Iscariot was a huge discovery for me and is probably my favorite after SD.

I could listen to "Whir" forever. Such a mature, vulnerable song.

Yes to Whir! One of their best songs. That one and Obscured are probably my two favorite cuts from the era. I like Corgan a lot in acoustic guitar mode with James (or is it Billy himself?) in electric guitar complimenting calmly with that beautiful tone.

Absolutely love how the results from the SP poll ended out. A lot of songs I love in the higher ranks, not a big emphasis on their singles - which

… I’m not a huge fan of except for a couple of them. The real juicy part of the pumpkin is not in their singles.

"Glynis," on Disc 2 of the deluxe ed., is such a cool song.

It's funny – and endearing, I guess – how the Pumpkins can be so corny/goofy/obvious, and then suddenly a song like that pops like...

*up

Ah, "Glynnis"...one of the little treasures housed on the No Alternative charity comp.

Otm. I'm always moved/suprised when it comes on. I find it so evocative of the time.

Try to Corgan form, though, the version on the Deluxe Edition box isn't the original.

Don't have it in front of me to a/b, but I recall (besides taking all the air out if the mix) it has added, louder, seemingly current/more nasal vocalizations from Corgan, and I recall more noodly soloing?

Oh, huh, I’ll have to check out the No Alternative version… I always saw that comp around, but never heard it / knew what was on it.

(Is the version of “Bye June” different from the take on Lull? I’d have to dig the EP out to a/b, which feels like werk. The liner notes for both songs say “Ignoffo Sessions,” I dunno what that means…)

Oh, "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" was on No Alternative, right before the Pumpkins song? That's really funny.

Is there a thread yet for "When a b-sides comp is their best album?"

It's impressive how "Starla" not only remains engaging for 11 mins., but feels like it's "just ramping up" when it cuts off... not an easy trick to pull with a track of that length (all the chord changes in the final gtr-wank section help with that illusion, I think).