The World Is A Dracula - Five
A Smashing Pumpkins Album Review/Concert Research Series
Before this newest album came out, Bill Pumpkin sang the oft repeated refrain that he was making an album that sounds like Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie… After all, he’s told us time and time again that he could write songs like that any time he wanted to, he just didn’t feel like it. But I guess now is the time to show the fans that he wasn’t lying.
Claiming that these songs were created using the same “mindset” as when they were doing Siamese Dream is, I’m sure, just hype and marketing1. After all, people stopped being 100% Ride Or Die for this band after Bill stopped writing sincere, personal lyrics — everything post Adore.
While Adore was a lightning rod that polarized the Pumpkins fan base, it is an intimate and arresting album about grief, following Bill’s divorce from his first wife and the death of his estranged mother. And he doesn’t owe fans anything! He doesn’t have to rip his heart out and serve it to listeners on a Big Muff fuzz pedal.
But the times where Bill has most fulfilled a creative covenant is when he has been honest. Lyrically honest with listeners about his feelings and his past. Aesthetically honest when presenting music that is telling a story or following a theme. Most of his creative sins come when promising something that cannot possibly be delivered, because of the impossibly profound expectations set by nostalgia.
We glorify and yearn for The Past because it is something that we can never have, even though we had it! We were all there, and it slipped through our fingers. And no matter who tells you it can be just like it was before, the best they can do is give you a fart in a jar.
Aghori Mhori Mei
Edin - The title feels like a combination of Eden and Odin, or it could just be Bill spelling things weird — both of those explanations would fit with the way he does things. The bridge makes this song feel like this is a metal version of a Gish-era song. Also the longest track on the album. This is just a little too “overproduced modern rock” sounding, and again, I think the drums are sampled or quantized.
Pentagrams - Another clean guitar intro before the distortion kicks in. These are some fucking nonsense lyrics, man... This does rawk, though. A good mix of pop and brutal damn guitars.
Sighommi - First a mention of Diana, and now Janus... Pretty good rawk riffs. It doesn’t really “feel” like anything, though. The obtuse lyrics make it seem like it is “about” something, but that could just be a trick of the light.
Pentecost - Uh oh, here comes a piano to kill everyone’s rawk boners. I guess this probably supposed to be an epic sort of song, but it doesn’t soar anywhere. Just something that kinda lays there in a heap and we’re left to shrug our shoulders when the rawk comes back in the next song.
War Dreams Of Itself - Oh, this song fucks! Babylon and Orcus — more history and mythology references — bringing to mind war in the Middle East. Something that lyrically would have fit better with Zeitgeist, but is also tragically always in the zeitgeist. Damn, this is a good one!
Who Goes There - Here come the synths, again. “Zebras on a megaphone...” The fuck? Interesting key changes. This song almost strikes a chord, but lyrically, it’s a little hollow. And the music isn’t interesting enough — it’s mostly just the same thing over and over. There are just bumps and a dip or two in the road, you aren’t taking any turns, and the speed limit never goes above 25.
999 - You see, this is “666” upside-down. So, that’s … something? Maybe it’s a reference to “Mayonaise,” ‘cause that’s the vibe I’m getting. And there’s Atlas. Great guitars and riffs, but the tones are a little too produced and modern rock radio sounding. Pretty good, though.
Goeth The Fall - A nice pop song. “Kino” is what some movie theaters are called in Europe. This whole song could be about film and stories and love and imagination. Gotta remember to put some of this stuff up on Genius.
Sicarus - Oh yeah, here we go! The lyrics are useless, though. I don’t know if there is some kind of thematic connection with gods and mythologies he’s trying to adhere to in order to tap into the Metal of it all, or if he’s just trying to be his normal, gibberish poetry self, in the guise of profundity. Sick drum fill, Jimmy! I don’t know what lyrics would work better, but I don’t know if anyone else really cares.
Murnau - I don’t know if it’s specifically a Gen Alpha thing, or just something that my daughter does with her dance friends, but she will just start speaking with a fake Australian accent2 out of nowhere, and this song title looks like something she would say like that. “Mer, nau.” Nice piano intro, and then the synths come crashing in. Can’t have us ending on a high note now, can we? Ending with a More Is More track, I guess there’s only so much you can ask for. Bill kept it in his pants up until this point, so you gotta give him that.
Now that I’ve done my due diligence and studied up on the past 20 years of the Pumpkins, I am ready for the show!
I do have a feeling that they will mostly stick to stuff from the first couple of albums, though. I’ve only looked at one or two setlists from this tour, but they have been opening for Green Day for all but a handful of dates. This is a headlining gig, baby! So, I don’t really know how deep they’ll get into some of these albums. They are playing a little from this new one, though, and I’ve only seen them once back on the Melon Collie tour, so I’m going to be fine with whatever I get.
This was the first time I had been in GA at a show in the Grand Sierra. It’s not that big a venue to begin with — 3,000-something capacity — but it’s always awesome to get up close. I was two people back from the rail on Kiki’s side, up until before the Pumpkins started to play, when two teen girls who had been behind me asked if they could get in front of me because of my height. I obliged, of course.
And the whole situation down on the floor was … polite? No one — at least over where I was — surged to get closer or tried to push their way up to the front. I don’t know if it was because everyone in the audience were either parents in their 40’s and 50’s or teen-aged and early 20’s girls. Pretty much everyone had room to take a couple steps in any direction around them. Maybe it’s because this wasn’t a super sold-out show (casinos gotta keeps some comps, y’know), but it looked like all the seats were filled.
It was awesome to see so many fathers there with their daughters, and it got me scheming for when I should introduce SP to my kid. She’s almost ten, so I should probably wait until she hits her angsty, sullen teen phase for it to really take.
The opener was a band called Glorious Sons. Never heard of them, but I guess they’re from Canada (looked that up after the fact). They were okay. Pretty much every song had a false stop where they would then start playing some more. The keyboard player was either super drunk or really into the music, because he kept knocking his stuff over. The singer reminded me of Bobby, one of the characters Bruce McCulloch played in Kids In The Hall.
I was there by myself and wasn’t feeling all that extroverted. I listened-in on the conversations of the people around me, and there were two people who were wearing their own home-made Kiki Wong shirts, because they were friends from college. Then right behind them, an older woman asked them where they got those, and it turns out she was a friend of Kiki’s mom.
Right up at the rail was, of course, Pumpkins superfan Monét. I thought she would be there, because she’s from just over the hill in Sacramento. I had seen her earlier while waiting in line, but she was talking to a group of people and I didn’t want to interrupt and be all rude. There was also that lack of extroversion I mentioned before...
When the show was over, I built up enough nerve to introduce myself. She then found a comp ticket on the ground (I told you about those comps!) and we talked a little bit before heading our separate ways. We also happened to be the only two people I saw in the whole place that were wearing masks.
From what I heard from other people, the setlist was pretty much exactly what they’ve been playing all tour with only two extra songs thrown in — not even an encore! Looking through social media afterwards, even some of the banter and bits they did in between songs were the same.
It was a good show. The Pumpkins seemed to be enjoying themselves. Only their amps were visible onstage — I think the speakers were in isolation cabinets at the back of the stage. That’s possibly how, at one point just past halfway through the show, I couldn’t hear Kiki’s guitar anymore. Everyone else could hear her through her in-ear monitors, but if the speakers were actually there on the stage with them, she probably would have been able to tell that something wasn’t working right.
That’s all I got for now. And I don’t know how to wrap this up.
-bcp
Mostly just to say “Oh no,” with the O flapping around in the wind at the end of the word “No.” An Australian accent is one of the harder ones to do, so that is one of the puzzling aspects. Although, my daughter does it quite well, and that makes me proud.