MELLON POLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS

(ans: 5. "Here Is No Why" – 3:45 )

Pick a good album why don't you oh wait.

stumbeline

no idea, since the better tracks are fairly even

So many great songs, but it's gotta be "1979."

Muzzle

Holy christ what is the point of this.

1979 easily, though there are several great songs on this album.

Shoulda been one disc

Man those last eight tracks are such a great run.

Someone start a thread "best names of Poll Threads"

This one gets a gold.

Man those last eight tracks are such a great run.

Glad you said that as most people would consider things like "Beautiful" and "We Only Come Out At Night" to be filler, but I reckon these make the album.

As for best track, that's very very difficult. Tempted to go with 1979, but there are so many decent songs on this.

"Porcelina" easily.

I think I bought and listened to this album once when it first came out, and haven't touched it since. Thought 1979 was alright though, so that's my vote.

Good lord I agree with geir

Thru the Eyes of Ruby gets my vote.

1979...otherwise still trying to figure out how to make listenable sense of this album, which I want to love since I thought the first two were great (maybe it's the mix that grates and makes me want to stop listening after "Zero"? or maybe it's that I'm not metal enough? or blah blah Corgan's voice? not the latter, actually)

haha and here i was thinking the thread name was a typo

"By Starlight" over "Porcelina" by a nose.

It was crap then. It's crap now.

Zero's OK.

here is no why.

Whoa, I agree with Geir too.

This is impossible, so I'll go with their NIN impression, "Love".

I'm leaning towards "Bodies" but I should pull it out to check. I like "Love" a lot too. And "Thirty-Three".

1979 ftw

ha GIS for "porcelina" sort of hilarious:
http://images.elfwood.com/art/r/o/robinbean/merland.jpg

Just barely like it more than "1979", because shit is EPIC man.

The only SP song I like is 1979.

I never quite got these guys, but Muzzle is a great song.

'here is no why'. i'll be surprised if 1979 doesn't win

Yeah, "Muzzle" is pretty great too. I could have voted that easily.

I'm gonna tip my hat to disc 2 & "We Only Come Out at Night"

I used to claim I didn't like Smashing Pumpkins. Then I realized I own four of their albums and don't want to flush them. So while I despise the "guilty pleasure" concept, SP would rank high on my list.

I just listened to this album for the first time in 5 years and hereby DENOUNCE and REJECT my previous vote for "Porcelina" in favor of "Jellybelly" which is my absolute favorite Punkins song and how the fuck did I forget about it!???

voted for Muzzle, but so many contenders. great album(s).

Through the Eyes of Ruby for me.

I'd love to hear the vinyl version of this with the different tracklisting.

Lots of great songs on this album. I saw them on this tour as well, they were great.

definitely MUZZLE

Cupid de Locke vs Love tossup

"Muzzle" was disappointing live but when I saw them it was the guy who isn't Jimmy Chamberlain. Otherwise also a fav.

This is actually one of the best examples of patchy double albums that could have made great single albums.

people try and make that case about all double albums

I think you'd be lucky to get a decent EP out of this, to be honest.

agreed. Maybe a single in 'thirty three'

No, really. There are around 10 "pop" songs here that are actually quite nice. They would only have to get rid of the noisiest and most aggressive tracks and they'd have a marvellous single album. Shame about that singing voice though - this is one of few cases where I agree it was a good idea to keep the vocals behind in the mix.

Impossible to choose between "Muzzle," "Porcelina," "Thru The Eyes Of Ruby," "Galapagos," and "Where Boys Fear To Tread," but I think I'll give it to the latter since it hasn't been getting upped yet on this thread...

As for the "make it one disc" thing, I raised that question on this thread and got some responses, for anybody into that kind of thing...

who gonna be the kook that votes 4 tales of a scorched earth

Fuck's sake - the whole point of Mellon Collie is that it's an overblown indulgence-fest; one of the last ones in mainstream rock - and that's why it's a great album. All this trimming-down talk, fffff!

What I mean is that re-listening to it now I think even having D'Arcy (a bit non-descript as a singer but it works out in Gish's Daydream) doing lead vocals in 5 of these songs would help cool down from Corgan doing the weasel thing in 28 tracks. Imagine a similar dynamic as Rachel/Neil in Slowdive.

I don't know... the songs where Jimmy Chamberlin is not as present makes me focus too much on Corgan's vocals and I find myself skipping them nowadays.

There's definitely something that happened to Billy's voice starting on this album that made it worse. I can't put my finger on what it is. Obviously the snotty nasal quality was always there, but it sounded fine on Gish and Siamese Dream. Maybe Butch Vig just had the magic touch.

I think it may come down to how *loud* he is singing a lot of the time along with how the vocals are mixed.

iirc his decision to record his vehicles as rawly as possible on this record was a deliberate decision by him and flood. he really scales back for adore

"in the arms of sleep" is one of my favorite songs here and he sounds godawful on it

Yeah the "raw" mixing is likely a big part of it. I also think he started doing fewer breathy sighs and more crooning which sounds like honking

There's definitely something that happened to Billy's voice starting on this album that made it worse. I can't put my finger on what it is. Obviously the snotty nasal quality was always there, but it sounded fine on Gish and Siamese Dream. Maybe Butch Vig just had the magic touch.

― c u (crüt), Monday, 18 August 2025 17:34 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was listening to Siamese Dream yesterday and I think the answer is that his voice is mixed quieter on SD and even more so on Gish (where he's absolutely awash among the arrangements, barely more than a presence). I feel like alt-rock and indie music generally tended to a more "buried" vocal mix pre-1994, and then around the mid-90s they started coming much more to the fore.

could probably chart billy ego vs billy vocal loudness

I remember seeing him in concert, in Houston during the SD tour and he was whining at the audience and that was the first time I really heard his speaking voice and it surprised me and I thought it was kinda funny. Then the first single from MCIS comes out and it's that same voice "THE WORLD IS A VAMPIRE" and I just could not take it seriously whatsoever.

First two albums are relatively mature offerings. Mellon Collie is juvenile, flamboyant and a seriously undergoes album

"Seriously unserious"

Corroborating all this: I first saw SP with Hole in late 1991, club level gig for Gish (the Whisky in LA IIRC), and what struck me about Billy's performance then was that it was *meditative*, for lack of a better word. It almost felt like he was sitting down (even though he wasn't) and calmly singing and playing while everything was exploding around him, a good loud and very compelling performance from everyone. My abiding memory is of him and his then big ol' head of hair, his eyes closed, lost in it all but still delivering a show. So the changeup between that and next time, which was the two times I caught him/them in LA at Lolla 94 -- the literal end of the whole SP tour cycle, to be fair, fuck knows how tired and cranky I might have been myself then -- was instructive. Still amazing performances both nights (and different setlists, even better) but jeez was he on one.

Gish is my favorite because his voice is not as protagonist to the songs or “in the front” of the mix.

Also it’s more drenched in psych-rock / dreampop. As the 90’s progressed they started shedding it.

If I had my druthers, I'd definitely trim a few tracks from this set. But after having tried to make a one-disc edit playlist a few years ago, and discovering today how many tracks I wanna hear that are missing, I'm convinced that this not only misses the "sprawling abundance of a double album" train, but that the hit:miss ratio here is too high for it to ever pan out. So if anything I think the way I've come to think about Tusk: you could PROBABLY make it into an unquestionable three-sided LP (with some aching, beautiful illustration etched into side IV), by cutting, say, Stumbeline, In the Arms of Sleep, To Forgive, Fuck You, Tales of a Scorched Earth and the instrumental.. Those are the only ones I really have no interest in hearing ever again, but for somebody else they might be the core (the heart music) of the album. If I'd known how to work my stereo fully in the 90s I could have probably just programmed those out anyway.

Man but I LOVE the doomy roar of Where Boys Fear to Tread!

messy but good, thats what I think of this album. the hits make a strong case for getting into the uh less effective moments or giving them a chance ... that said im with raymond that "adore" is my fav overall project, maturation of corgan's songwriting, sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shaaaame

Adore is the dark lodestone of it all, his Projekt Records entry, a perfect poised point. And both "Shame" and "Behold! The Night-Mare" will live in my brain forever.

I couldn’t even say how long it’s been since I listened to the whole thing!

When in the mood for the album I’m probably reaching for “Galapagos” or “Zero” or “1979”, maybe “Beautiful” or “Lily”.

Maybe I should try Adore again. Did the Lost Highway soundtrack and “Eye” come out before Adore? That’s the first I remember hearing that mode of Pumpkins and I really don’t like that song. I think it turned me against their electro-goth direction but enough fans like it that I would try again. Nothing after that though.

Lost Highway was ‘97, I think. Adore was ‘98.

XP Lost Highway was early '97, so pre-Adore, as were the two Batman & Robin songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OEvDqRr898

ugh

i like adore but it's somehow less consistent than mellon collie and the production is so much worse, it's so muddy and compressed. idk why all of flood's production work started sounding like that - pop and is this desire have the same problem but adore has it the worst. it does have some of their best work like "behold! the night mare" and "for martha"

adore isn’t that muddy ??

and is this desire. does not have that problem omg

“perfect” is basically my idea of a… uh… perfectly produced song

I'd never heard Eye until now. Huh...

I did like The End Is The Beginning Is The End though

“Eye” is so fucking good!

There are maybe a few meat'n'potatoes rockers that are great on their own but sound like they belong to the Siamese Dream era (sorry Jellybelly and Muzzle).

what's the distinction you're drawing here? I don't know Siamese Dream all that well, and I mean there are a lot of other 'qualities' to Mellon Collie that someone might latch onto. but the one I tend to fixate on is, the sound of the live band is the bedrock of Mellon Collie, and the more kitschy ornamental shit weaves around that. For all the wacky 'arrangement ideas' and songwriting and production experiments, it has a very live feel most of the time. SD sounds a lot more 'constructed'.

I just remembered Corgan wrote several Celebrity Skin songs which sound like Smashing Pumpkins songs but they sound great with Courtney on vocals both in the agressive songs and the dreamy/melancholic ones. A good female singer splitting vocal duties would have worked for me.

I'm not so sympathetic to the idea of Corgan as the auteur here, or the band and record as a vehicle for his songwriting. Great as most of the songs are, it's the other way around for once. And that is one killer band! They can all really play and they have this iconic, glamorous sound like rocket ignition.

WBFTT rocks and I love that it samples the Doom rocket launcher sound

...not a coincidence! That Hole record is really good too, but Hole are not the Smashing Pumpkins (and I know you specified it's "the songs where Jimmy Chamberlin is not as present" where you want to hear another vocalist- sure, I'm just too lazy rn to find a more relevant post to quote sorry)

smh that "Jellybelly" is anyone's idea of 'meat and potatoes' rock. Damn.

lol Adore and esp. Is This Desire are two of the better produced records of that era IMO

I thought so too

Never seen this band live, but listening to Disc 6 (lol?) of Aeroplane and this is an amazing document of an amazing band

"outright duds here:
-title track (should have been like, a minute at most)"

My one disc version, which is mostly the hard crunching songs that don't go over four mins, would begin with this nice little ditty, though I like Stumbeline and To Forgive, a couple of others..

Re listening to much of it yesterday and can hardly stomach the epics. Just do the meat and potatoes, I'm a simple person.

years back made a single disc version and i'm pretty sure it opened with the title track before going on to the punishing "tales of a scorched earth"

smh that "Jellybelly" is anyone's idea of 'meat and potatoes' rock. Damn.

― i hid your comb in the teapot (Deflatormouse), Monday, August 18, 2025 10:41 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

when i first bought the album i would always skip this song because i was a sulky teen that just wanted to get straight to "zero". now it blows my mind they never considered it for a single.

and is this desire. does not have that problem omg

― ivy., Monday, August 18, 2025

Seconding this. Is This Desire sounds marvelous.

'Beautiful' just came on. Shoulda been a single, it would have been huge

Okay, going to bump this while I run errands today. Will report back. I remember Jellybelly as being Cherub Rock but not as good.

more like ‘fast-forwarded smashing pumpkins cd’

If I'd known how to work my stereo fully in the 90s I could have probably just programmed those out anyway.

whoa fancy

this album suffers from late-90s cram-every-last-minute-of-the-CD disease. it's not that there are too many songs on it (they're all really good), but they all go on for at least a minute too long (except '17' which gets cut off early!)

Save for Ava Adore and Once Upon A Time, I can take-or-leave the opening half. Things really kick into gear on Appels + Oranjes, then it's through-and-through a pretty great listen. Behold The Night Mare is a real standout

oh whoops, that was meant to be on the adore thread.

I'm not so sympathetic to the idea of Corgan as the auteur here, or the band and record as a vehicle for his songwriting. Great as most of the songs are, it's the other way around for once. And that is one killer band! They can all really play and they have this iconic, glamorous sound like rocket ignition.

Not in every song he co-wrote and obviously Eric and Courtney’s fingerprints can be traced all over these songs. But a song like “Malibu” has a very similar DNA to “1979”, “Perfect” or “Stand Inside Your Love”.

The first time hearing the album without knowing BC had co-written some of it “Hit so Hard”, “Petals” and “Malibu” immediately made me think they had a massive SP influence. Little did I know.

One of the great things about Celebrity Skin is that both of these things can be true. You can hear Corgan's impact but you can also hear that he wouldn't have been able to do these songs himself (and a lot of the best songs didn't involve him).

It's collaboration resulting in something greater than the sum of its parts in the best possible sense.

I'm reminded of how Bjork's work on her first four albums clearly bore the imprints of her collaborators (the tricky songs sounded a bit like tricky etc.) but never in a way that indicated or suggested she wasn't the predominant driver of the sound(s) of her work.

i was talking about Mellon Collie there, not Celebrity Skin. i see how that was very unclear. sorry Moka!
just saying that i hear the songwriting as mostly subordinate to the Smashing Pumkins’ gargantuan live band sound on Mellon Collie. as great as the songs are, i usually put that album on to be pulverized and dazzled by the sound of the band. your proposal of subbing in Darcy as the singer (on specifically some songs where this is not the case) is tantalizing the more i think about it, but i shouldn’t have quoted you since it wasn’t really in response to your posts.

i think the last time i actually listened to Celebrity Skin was more than 20 years ago, and i mostly remember the first 3 songs (it’s easy enough to imagine the Pumpkins doing Hit so Hard)

the bigger thing that makes me love this album is the treasure trove of material left off. i love "set the ray to jerry" but it feels undercooked for this album and a relic of the SD/PI era. "Meladori Magpie" would've fit snugly into the back half of disc 2.

set the ray to jerry doesn’t sound like anything else on earth

there's a bunch of bloc party songs that it sounds like

“Set the ray to Jerry” is one of my favorite songs from this era! Melon Collie is filled with guitar bombast so I like the variation of the bass and drums leading the song.

I kind of relate that sort of sound to a certain U2 sound where the bass and drums provide the backbone to the whole thing and the guitars are there as a more subtle, texture sound.