Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

The genius of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is its sheer scope. It establishes the Pumpkins as a genre in their own right and, thus is like no other album. The name of the album and tracks and the sleeve artwork set the tone for what I've always considered a melodrama in musical form. The songs deal with love, despair and anger in equal measures, whilst there are enough life-affirming moments ("you're not same you're different tonight/and you can make it last forever") to ensure that not everything is doom and gloom.

By and large however, Mellon Collie is a dark album - either it breaks your heart - e.g. the beautiful Stumbleine or desparate In the Arms of Sleep; or it tears it out in a maelstrom of raging distortion (this album is at times the sonic representation of the brutality of warfare) - e.g. Tales of a Scorched Earth or XYU - sometimes it does both at the same time - e.g. Bodies.

The lyrics are some of the greatest ever to have been written, proof of that fact evident in the evocative 1979, Muzzle and Thirty three - there's even some dark humour in the quirky Lily (my one and only) Incidentally, I've read a lot of reviews that regard the first disc to be superior to the second. In my opinion this is not the case - Bodies, Thirty-three, Arms of sleep, 1979 - and I could go on - combined with the subtle Beautiful and delicate Farewell and Goodnight make Twighlight to Starlight a superb album in its own right.

If you like intelligent, skillfully performed rock, Mellon Collie is for you. It is music for the soul, an album that transports you to its own world and sets you adrift in a sea of raw emotion. Buy it now, avail yourself of everything else the Pumpkins have produced, and keep an eye out for Billy Corgan's new solo album in the hopefully not too distant future.

This has become a very personal album to me. I can remember the day i bought it and coming home and playing it for the first time and being blown away. I'd never heard an album like it and i don't think i have since.
The first song (the title track)is a gorgeous opener and will seduce you right away with its beautiful piano melody. It's then followed by tonight, tonight, again a beautiful song and then just as you've started getting comfortable you're greeted with the crushing heaviness of the opening riff from jellybelly.Of course Corgan never just relies on heavy riffage alone, the chorus in jellybelly (particularly the last one) soars and confirms what a brilliant and ambitious songwriter he is. Probably the best of his generation at the time he wrote this album.
This whole album is about balance, for every hard riff there is a beautiful melody. There is so much depth to this album, no emotion seems to be left out and it really is a journey of many ups and downs. I personally love the way that at the end of the album as the dying chords of the last song begin to melt away you hear a similar piano melody to the one at the beginning of the album so that you feel you've come full circle, only this time you have this whole journey behind you, and all the emotions you have felt from listening to these songs, from this journey. Somehow it all sounds different now.
This is truly an album, rather than a collection of songs. Although each song is individually enjoyable it is the overall impression this album leaves you with. Every track is very different, varying in pace, style and sound and yet there seems to be a common thread that links them all. a common message. what that is I dont know. The only think i can link it to is life itself, all the different moods and the journey that this album seems to evoke only to end up at the beginning again. but thats just me. I get the feeling that billy corgan would want this album to mean something specific to whoever hears it as i'm sure it all means something specific to him.
I love this album and it astounds me everytime i think about it and everytime i hear it. This is what music is supposed to do, tap into your soul and make you feel something beautiful inside of yourself, something thats too wonderul to describe in this review but i hope i have at least given you a glimpse.

This is one of the greatest albums of the 90s and only a couple of others come close. When this was released, the UK was in the middle of the Britpop explosion and this album was entirely out of step with the current scene. Despite the grunge origins of the band, this is closer in spirit to Black Sabbath or even early Genesis (check out the ultra-prog artwork and the title track) than to Nirvana, though there are plenty of trashy tracks in there.

The reason this is a masterpiece is because it is so multidimensional. On first listen it is a sprawling confusing mess and it took me many listens to appreciate exactly how good it is. In fact every time you play it you notice something new and interesting. How many albums can you say that about?

This album has everything - delicacy (the title track), full on metal attack (Jellybelly, XYU), rock (Tonight, Tonight), prog rock (Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, Thru the eyes of Ruby) and even Beatles style pop (Lily). Smashing Pumpkins' White Album? - oh yes.

The sad thing is how few bands have been inspired by this album to make innovative, risk taking music of their own. Perhaps only Radiohead come close to making this kind of adventurous rock music these days.

All the other Pumpkins albums are worth getting. The most accessible one is probably Siamese Dream, though Adore is underrated and excellent in an entirely different way to this.