Three 65, Day 27
Smashing Pumpkins, MACHINA/The Machines Of God

In keeping with yesterday's review of Amnesiac, a decent album by Radiohead that everyone had problems with, we're going to take a look at a record in a similar position. MACHINA has the unenviable honor of being the Smashing Pumpkins' last good album; it's also their last album before the band imploded completely, casting bassist D'Arcy Wreztky and guitarist James Iha into the wilderness (or into the ever-loving arms of, respectively, crack and A Perfect Circle).

A lot of people didn't like this album. They felt it was overwrought, underwritten, and altogether too arty. I say: Fuck them. This is a great album, and it's a stunning return to form after the too-soft Adore, an electronic album the band recorded while trying to figure out what to do without their drummer. (They fired him for using heroin. As a solution, they eventually re-hired him. WTF?)

"The Everlasting Gaze" is, to put it simply, one of the hardest rocking songs in the Pumpkins' oeuvre. A lot of their songs feature vocalist/guitarist Billy Corgan's ranting, especially when the song drops out in the middle of raging full-on and leaves him with only a few notes to work with. None of them do it as well as this. "Gaze" alone is indication that he's finally begun to master his musical ambitions.

If that song was good, its follow-up, "Raindrops + Sunshowers," is great. As a song, it's decent, but as a demonstration of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin's prowess, it's amazing. The guy just does not stop. With nary a break in style or momentum, he just smacks the shit out of the skins without abandon for the duration of the entire song. Good work, Jimmy.

Other excellent moments include "I Of The Mourning," which is about Billy Corgan's love of the radio; "Heavy Metal Machine," which is as heavy as it sounds and features the immortal couplet "If I died / would my records sell?" "The Imploding Voice" is prog-rock for the ages, complete with vocal distortion, and "Glass And The Ghost Children" is a multi-part epic of slowly building horror.

The album ends with "Age Of Innocence," a plaintive return to the almost-indie pop of earlier Pumpkins albums. Perhaps seeing the end of the band as it originally stood in his eyes, Corgan penned the lyrics "Desolation yes / hesitation no / As you might have guessed / We won't make it home / Desolation yes / hesitation no." It takes a lot of balls to put it that way - a lot more than Corgan has ever been accused of having.