Smashing Pumpkins
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Fantastic! No one has reviewed this masterpiece yet... I hope to do my best...

"The next album will surely be a double and it will be like a soundtrack for day and night. I want an album that can capture our heaviest and most absurd side, the extremes of Black Sabbath, and the other to be in the style of Mazzy Star, capable of soothing you. I want it to be an album you listen to in the car, when you're going out, capable of exciting you, while I want the other album to be like a breeze at 4 am. Because often if you listen to one thing you never want to be interrupted by something of another genre."

That's what Billy claimed the day after the release of the new album... and indeed that's the impression it gives us... an all-day record, characterized by various genres ranging from instrumental (the first song beautifully named after the album itself) to harder and more explosive rock, extending along a vast range of lightly hybrid-colored sounds... in fact (in my opinion) the pumpkins have never fit into any category, and it has always been important for them not to be cataloged.
Their music is like a person you know, who whispers to you, gently speaking to your heart... these are the sensations conveyed by Mellon Collie represented by a "spiritual" sound in its essence but not in a direct way, the environment the album creates puts you in touch with something that could make you consider life in a deeper and more sensitive way... and that's why I think a great band should be able to communicate on a spiritual plane as well as a physical one.

What can I say? Perhaps it's pointless to talk about the more illustrious successes of the Chicago band... too easy and common to judge songs like Tonight Tonight, 1979, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Zero, etc... But I mean that within the album you need to search for a bitter and deep suffering made clear only in the more profound "voices" of Bodies ("love is a suicide..."), In the Arms of Sleep, To Forgive, Galapagos... Simpler and lighter songs are used to seek a bright light that can lighten our minds from the continuous disagreements with ourselves and with the world that looks at and affects us...
An album that if listened to, felt, and experienced helps connect ourselves with the darker sides of our ego... am I exaggerating?? ...but maybe this perception is purely personal...