For too long now has Billy Corgan laboured under the impression that it’s cool to emote through your nose, hooting out his anguish through pinced-nez and spreading despair throughout the rock community like some disgruntled sheep that’s swallowed a train platform Tannoy.
As much as his sinus-based grievances sounded bad with the sound levels dreadfully askew on the Smashing Pumpkins’ blandly muscular return of last year, Zeitgeist, they don’t sound a whole lot better paired with the ponderous folk strummery evidenced on new EP, American Gothic.
It's passably structured, yes, but instantly forgettable and with a curious lack of personality that’s unfortunately become one of Corgan’s calling cards post-Y2K.
'Pox' is the pick of the bunch, grungy acoustic and bass fairly thrumming with latent menace, but really, there’s nothing here to surprise or convince sceptics that the decision to revert to the original fruit-busting moniker was anything but a perfunctory piece of rebranding – they’ve rebadged it, you fool, etc.
phew
thought it was just me, my other pumpkin fan friends are raving about it and seem to really like it and compare it to the good bits of Zwan but I got absolutely nothing from it, no song that you can sing along to, no lyrics that felt vital, the worst phtoshop in two minutes sleeve ever, perhaps it should have stayed buried on iTunes.
This review is pretty harsh...
This EP is well lush, and definitely a grower. The melodies in Sunkissed are just dreamy. The whole thing flowers with repeat listens.
As for the perceived lack of personality, that seems beside the point. This is great music. I refer you to the words of Mr Tom Jenkinson (aka Squarepusher) writing in 2004:
"work (that)drips with earnestness and tries to be quirky or have
"personality" is a radical mistake that ensures no one will care about it in the future - the exposed truth of
personalities is so completely boring."
Kudos for getting a Partridge reference in though and "fruit-busting moniker" made me smile.
Moniker is a funny word.
Its better the Zeitgeist
nothing special though but at least worthy a 5 or 6 and not a 4. It did grow on me, I would have agreed at first.