Musings on Smashing Pumpkins tracks not to be included on Zeitgeist / Interpol....

As stated in my review of the new Smashing Pumpkins album Zeitgeist, I believe that there is enough to suggest that Billy Corgan remains a songwriter of more than respectable ability, but that in recent years his bizarre choices in the recording of songs often leads to them being ruined, something which most obviously reared its head with Machina / The Machines Of God.

Here's another thing that's come to bother me about some of his recent projects: His judgment. Back in the Siamese Dream / Mellon Collie eras he was so incredibly prolific and proficient that it *didn't matter* that there were gems that didn't make the albums - The records were so strong by themselves that the brilliant b-sides were just a sumptuous bonus. The two commercially released Adore singles were relatively slim on such offerings, but never mind, the album was fantastic and that is what truly mattered.

Machina / The Machines Of God posed more of a problem. As anyone who heard live shows from that era or who downloaded Machina II / The Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music (available free & legally here, for anyone who wants it) will know that there were an awful lot of wonderful songs recorded in this era. They'll also quite possibly think - as I do - that the production lets more than a few down, but I'll put that aside for a moment. There was quite a bit of crap recorded during those sessions too - rather a lot more, I'd suggest, than during the Mellon Collie era, which produced a gargantuan number of songs. This wouldn't be a problem if the cream of the crop was selected for the album which came to retail, but that wasn't the case. If a composite release of the best of the Machina sessions had been the one which emerged in early 2000, we'd have a contender for the best Smashing Pumpkins album. As it is, we don't.

So why bring that up now? Well, because if the evidence of the three 'bonus tracks' ("Stellar" from Itunes, "Death From Above" via Best Buy or as the b-side of the Tarantula single & "Zeitgeist" if you purchase the record from Target) he's at it again, because these songs are all really rather good, certainly a lot better than Zeitgeist's weakest moments. In fact, the album would get a Three and a Half from me if, say, "Zeitgeist" (acoustic prettiness which could have come from 1995) replaced "Starz", "Stellar" (dreamy, upbeat yet melancholy guitar driven effort) effort bumped "United States" & "Death From Above" (A successful synth-pop offering, perhaps seen as being too similar to TheFutureEmbrace to warrant inclusion...?) replaced "Bring The Light" or "For God And Country".

Plenty of people will disagree with that, but for me at least they would transform the record from a half-good one into an album with only a couple of weaker tracks. Billy Corgan is a *great* songwriter - It's just a shame that he's also his own worst enemy.

I'm looking forward to writing about the new Interpol album Our Love To Admire and will hopefully have a review up by the end of the week.