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Rating: There are some people who have managed the rare feat of encapsulating and summarizing their entire essence within a single work, to express the infinity of their soul in all its shades and nuances through an artistic creation. I think, for example, of Roger Waters and "his" The Wall. Billy Corgan is one of these people. There are excellent artists, who have composed beautiful songs and albums, but only a few have been able to create the work of their lifetime.
This album is something beyond music, something precious that Billy wanted to gift to the world. It's not just about 28 beautiful songs, it's something more; it is the sum of everything this immense soul had inside, and he managed to miraculously bring it out in these two hours of sublime beauty. It is one of those albums, like the aforementioned The Wall, that give meaning to an entire life, after which the creator may even be an unpleasant and presumptuous guy, may even publish mediocre albums, dedicate himself to projects that are almost useless (Swan), but we will endlessly owe him gratitude, because he gave life to something sacred. How many of us feel we have something important, good, inexpressible inside? This album, which encapsulates the interiority of a man, is at the same time the voice of our most intimate feelings, our deep melancholy, and at the same time our highest and purest aspirations. Listening to this masterpiece, we are faced with everything the soul can encounter on its journey, the melancholic and dark awareness of its own limitations, the nostalgia of childhood, adolescence, of those seasons of life when our dreams seem within reach. There is Love, the awareness of its impossibility, the dull pain of overwhelming and irrational madness.
"Love is Suicide" sings good old Billy, and who doesn't feel pierced by the chilling truth that emerges from his ungraceful voice? But there is also hope, the desire to live in the fullest sense of the word, the eternal utopia, the impossible becoming possible of "Tonight tonight". And yet, the extreme sweetness, the enchantment, the need to step outside oneself, to truly communicate one's inner world. "And I'll Do Anything to Keep Her Here Tonite", and which of us hasn't felt the same? And then there is anger, the feeling of one's own impotence and the need to overcome it, to scream against a world that seems deaf and insensitive. Feeling like a "Zero", a rat in a cage, the need for escape from an oppressive reality.
And here I'll stop, but I could go on for hours, so rich is this marvelous album in ideas and emotions. I realize I haven't said much about the musical aspect of the album and I apologize, but I grew up with these songs and could only make a very personal review. I just want to say that undoubtedly the presence of the other pumpkins is not irrelevant at all, the album wouldn't have been the same without them. There is also, at the end of the first CD, a beautiful ballad written and sung by James Iha, which manages to hold its own, and that wasn't easy. In conclusion, an immense work in my opinion, superior to the rest of the group's excellent discography.
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