The Smashing Pumpkins
Tonight Tonight

Brushing Against Autumn

Autumn just realized this morning that it had left too much space for summer, and when I woke up, I found it there waiting for me outside the window, already seated on the throne of seasons with its gray crown, the scepter of cold, and the mantle of wind and rain. Autumn claimed its days suddenly and with arrogance, and since this arrogance bothers me, I decided to close the shutter and wrap myself again in the blanket, letting it rage outside my life, beyond the window, far from my dreams. But soon even I must accept the blanket of clouds and the silences of the empty house, and this single, taken from the collection "The Aeroplane Flies High," can help me harmonize with the new but old season while staying well hidden in my pajamas.

I would like to consider each single from "Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness" as an album in itself, like a path branching off from the main road leading us towards other emotions, other suggestions. In particular, the seven songs of "Tonight Tonight" might seem like a mini solo project by Billy Corgan. The title-track is a true lightning bolt out of a clear sky that unleashes a night storm of strings, an epic and engaging sound carpet, where the drummer Chamberlain's energy and the leader's vocal power take the lion's share. The lyrics are poetic and generational, the melodies unleashed and sublime: perhaps one of the best tracks written by the band in 13 years of career.
The originality of this single is that following the unleashed energy of the first track come sweet and bare songs, light whispers that, escaping from dreams to flee from feelings of rain, hide in the melancholy (classic for Billy!) of warm morning blankets. "Meladori Magpie" is made of refined slide guitar textures, while "Rotten Apples" is an authentic acoustic masterpiece talking about dark claws of death and letters yellowed by distant scorn. The record continues on even more low-fi tones, and the slow lullaby "Jupiter's Lament" is a tear of just voice and guitar evaporated in the solitude of a heart wrapped with tape and ribbons, followed by the sighed echoes of the piano in "Medellia Of The Grey Skies," the younger and more tender sister of "Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans." The simplicity of "Blank" is a brief pearl of regrets and wrong words, a letter with no words written, stammering and barely hinted at before the solely acoustic reprise of "Tonite Reprise," where Mr. Corgan's croaking voice tells us of wind-up toys running down, covering the sound of a life lived underground...

After wrapping ourselves in these melodies, ancient and yet so fresh, if not underground, we would like to continue living the rustles of our personal autumn closed in the room of when we were children, embraced by the wood of the guitar, and slightly warmed by the silent voices of the ghosts escaped from the Sandland of "Mellon Collie."

"Rotten Apples"

Dirty your face
With longing and grace, God-given
Suffer her heart
And love her when your love goes unrequited

Where the cool winds blow
I must surely go
For my love calls me below to drag her
from the depths of my soul

When will I see her again?
The other side of friends
The darkened claws of death
The empty breath, desire

(...)

Restless in my speech
And rootless in my teach
So vacant in my breach
I drive the dirt of her garden

Sorrow
She'll never listen again
No other lovers to bend
Just rotten apples to eat
Just letter yellowed distant scorn

(...)

Life just fades away
Purity just begs
Dust to dust, we're wired into sadness