In recent years, I’ve developed the rather quirky habit of naming Adore as my favorite album by The Smashing Pumpkins. Now, obivious “hipster” accusations aside, I did cite the album’s consistency as a commendable measure ahead of Mellon Collie, and, even Siamese Dream, whose uncomfortable extremes of volume can certainly be a handful.
I mean, what with the lame piano intro and the endless, faux-ethereal “ballads,” sitting through the full version of Mellon Collie should reap an ensuing reward of some sort.
Anyway, yesterday I decided to see what would happen if I boiled the contents down to my favorite 14 songs from the double-CD mastodon, modified from the previous quantity of 28, and see what would happen.
Whoa, nelly!
It’s impossible to describe with words the improvement. It’s like the toothpick and caviar appetizer are finally out of your teeth and you can really bite into the main course with out extraneous adulteration.
My shortened version started with “Tonight, Tonight”; as I just arranged the songs in their order on the original album. This tune, as we know, is bombastic and pretty ambitious, but enjoyable enough, with enough cool chord changes and phrasing unorthodoxies to retain your listen. From there, it was a complete onslaught of rock glory, pinpointing some of the best rock production of the decade, with the mix nice and thick, as well as various other entrancing wrinkles like the soft, sans-percussion portion toward the end of “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” enlivening things, and the element of Jimmy Chamberlain’s drum fills almost letting him steal the whole dang show, at times.
I’m not kidding you: it’s better than Nevermind and Superunknown, and, as to whether it’s better than OK Computer, we might need Janeane Garofalo or Matt Pinfield to answer that one. Nonetheless, you won’t truly know ’90s rock until you listen to this abridged version of Mellon Collie, I swear. It’s an unparalleled confluence of vituperative emotion and hearty songwriting knack to put it in company all its own.
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