FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| CD REVIEW THE SMASHING PUMPKINS · Seventeen-song follow-up to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. · Produced by disturbed, alterna rock, Keebler elf Billy Corgan with a little help from Flood and Brad Wood. Anyone worried that Pumpkins' guitarist James Iha's solo album was an indication of where the band was heading with their career can relax - Adore is not an E-Z listening, flower-sniffing, puppy-petting lollygag through the woods with Burt Bacharach. But neither is it the arena-filling ear-bleeder I'm sure many of their fans have come to expect from the only true survivor of early '90s rock 'n' roll. No, for the most part Adore showcases a kinder, gentler and slower Billy Corgan and Co., but it does so with a melancholic, suicidal moodiness that is quite often beautiful, and other times dangerously close to glum. Most of the tracks are expertly built upon a sad piano and hover weightily around its keys, never exploding, always ready with a box of tissues and a shoulder for the many tears. The closest Adore gets to tension is a pseudo techno beat in a handful of tracks - including the exceptional "1979" successor "Appels and Oranjes" - and Corgan, at his least reserved, half-heartedly pleading, "Kiss and kill me sweetly/Come and drive me home," in the track "Pug." The remaining lump of lyrics speak of loss and emotional fatigue with a truly hollow acceptance of both and little in the way of an answer for either. It's as if the two-CD Melon Collie was venomous - and sustained enough to exorcise all of the demons Corgan had shackled to his angry psyche and now the emptiness is all that's left to offer. Unlike most musicians, that's almost enough. 4/5 |
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