|
Smashing Pumpkins
MACHINA/The Machines of God
(Virgin)
First Appeared at The Music Box, May 2000, Volume 7, #5
Written by Michael Karpinski
In the weeks and months preceding the Smashing Pumpkins’ most recent release, the rumors were
rife; the buzzards were hovering. After the lagging sales of 1998’s dead-on-arrival Adore,
the suspiciously sudden defection of bass guitarist D’Arcy in late 1999, and the equally abrupt
exodus of band manager Sharon Osbourne in January of 2000, there seemed every reason to believe that
MACHINA/the machines of God would sound the definitive death knell for the perpetually
unsettled, Chicago-based collective.
Of course, the Smashing Pumpkins have always served as a glorified — and ill-disguised —
one-man showcase for singer/songwriter Billy Corgan — his shaved pate and feral teeth somehow
always less suggestive of a ghoulish Nosferatu than a pasty-faced Uncle Fester with a Messiah
complex. Having first staked his claim to rock-god posterity with 1993’s chronically over-praised Siamese Dream, the Pumpkins’ incorrigible frontman struck the mother lode with
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a dazzlingly ambitious
double-disc set that — despite its occasional overblown opus, plodding stomper, and directionless
sketch — nevertheless afforded Corgan the expansive canvas he seemed to need in order to keep his
demons and dementia in check and just generally get his megalomaniacal ya-ya’s out.
With its 15 songs clocking in at 70+ minutes, MACHINA/the machines of God is hardly an
exercise in pithy minimalism. Corgan’s infamously shrill sinus-whine runs its usual lab-rat range —
from shriek to squeak and back again — on a disc steeped in the sort of creepily obsessive love
songs that one cannot help but suspect the man is singing to himself. While things begin
encouragingly enough (The Everlasting Gaze’s raw riffage and sinister, Jimmy Chamberlin-administered
stomp), the rest of the record plays out as a surprisingly mild-mannered, sometimes shockingly
lobotomized link between the Pumpkins’ past and present.
Much of the blame can be placed on a self-consciously muddied production style that seems less a
nod to early Pumpkins’ fuzz and sludge than a belated sonic apology for the under-appreciated
Adore’s straightforward candor and clarity. Thus, the sort of subtle, tuneful accouterments that
might otherwise elevate songs to signature status (This Time’s squalling, U2-like guitar; The Sacred and Profane’s soaring backing chant) are left helplessly burbling in the murk —
sinking their songs right along with them. The promisingly poppy The Imploding Voice sounds
as though it were strained through an out-of-range cell phone; while Heavy Metal Machine’s
six-minute slab of dread ‘n’ drone might well get Marilyn Manson salivating in his panties but just
sends the rest of us fumbling for our CD players’ [->] buttons. Only With Every Light, a
gently effortless, Mellon Collie-esque confection, manages to make even an iota of impact —
an impact all-but-instantly undercut by the blandly monochromatic album-cappers Blue Skies Bring
Tears and Age of Innocence.
If those hovering buzzards should actually be on to something — if those rumors of dissolution
should ultimately prove true — what a pitiful epitaph MACHINA/the machines of God will make
for a band that has successfully navigated the rock ’n‘ roll rapids for better than a decade — and
has never been less than entertaining in telling the tale. 
MACHINA/the machines of God is available from
Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
For UK orders, please
Click Here!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2000
The Music Box
| 
