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Rating: Before disbanding the Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan made three EPs and an LP available for free download, which together formed the double album "Machina II". It was the year 2000. To get an idea of how ahead of the times he was, consider that Radiohead released their album "In Rainbows" in the same manner a full seven years later, acclaimed by critics and hailed as extraordinary innovators.
Our Billy, who was and is a genius, this time goes even further, deciding to record one song at a time and to predefine only the final result: the album "Teargarden by Kaleidyscope" consisting of eight EPs, probably to be fully released between 2013 and 2014, thereby of biblical dimensions and timelines.
This "Songs for a Sailor" is the first EP published, followed a few months ago by the surprising "The Solstice Bar". Five tracks in the best Smashing Pumpkins tradition but with novelties that cannot fail to surprise. First of all, the heterogeneity of the compositions, also due to the often several months distance between one and the next.
The first track "Song for a Son" is an attempt, incredibly almost entirely successful, to write a classic 70s piece. The resemblance to "Stairway to heaven" is evident and not even hidden, and in this lie both the strengths and weaknesses of the composition. "Widow Wake My Mind" with its sunny and balanced melodic opening is an absolute novelty in the Pumpkins' compositional style. Newcomers should remember that Billy Corgan's shrill voice would make even Schubert's Ave Maria sound rough, and so this radiant piece in both lyrics and music inevitably and unmistakably sounds rock.
To reassure nostalgic fans, there is "Astral Planes", which seems to have come out of the legendary "Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness". Again, it is as if the author wanted to challenge himself, and the challenge is to write a sharp and driving track like "Zero" and "Jellybelly" once were. The opinion of the writer is that perhaps certain almost grunge attitudes are no longer part of Corgan, if not for anything else but age reasons.
If the previous was a challenge with himself, in "A Stitch in Time" he tries to emulate a reference group like REM, this time with greater success, resulting in a brilliant composition played between acoustic guitar and a perfectly matched synthesizer counterpoint.
It closes with an instrumental track, "Teargarden Theme", not available in mp3 but present only in the vinyl version, stylistically light years away from what was heard in the previous four tracks, an intertwining of electric guitar and keyboard evoking both old and new Pumpkins melodies.
If the morning shows the day, then it is legitimate to hope for a work of great satisfaction in the end.
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