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Day: 4 January 2015

Album: Smashing Pumpkins – Monuments to an Elegy

Written by Dan Whiteley on . Posted in Music.

Released 5th December

Martha’s Music/BMG Records

7/10

Ever since their 2006 ‘reunion’—to use the word in the most liberal sense possible—the Smashing Pumpkins have, for the most part, kept true to their reputation for grandiosity and artistic ambition, whilst acting more and more as simply a mouthpiece for Billy Corgan, alternative rock’s premier absent-minded professor. His latest and greatest whim is the eyewateringly (some might say needlessly) complex Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project, which started back in 2009 and spans several albums-within-albums and overarching lyrical concepts, all of which make sense to someone somewhere, presumably. Monuments to an Elegy is the latest instalment, and despite its typically bombastic name, sticks out like a sore thumb not just against the backdrop of Teargarden but in their catalogue as a whole; it’s their shortest, leanest and perhaps most accessible album to date, featuring just nine tracks and clocking in at just over half an hour.

Featuring the trio of Corgan, post-reunion mainstay Jeff Schroeder and Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee on drums, the album most recalls 2007’s Zeitgeist in its ‘no-frills’ modern rock sound. But where Zeitgeist was a punishing listen full of claustrophobic production and pummelling riffs, Monuments is an altogether lighter, airier affair, melding their trademark fuzzy guitars and Corgan’s nasal snarl with electronica-tinged production that’s heavy on the synthesizers and allows the songs room to breathe. The album’s compact running time also means that the filler that plagued even their most revered efforts (looking at you, Mellon Collie) is largely absent, and the weaker moments come and go so fast you barely notice the lag in quality. ‘Dorian’, a dreamy Future Islands-sounding number, is the only track that truly lets the side down, with its dodgy lyrics (“Dorian/what have you done/as you run/a setting sun”) that seem a little too much like an afterthought.

Apart from that, though, the album delivers: the lovely ‘Being Beige’ is a throwback to earlier ballads like ‘Disarm’ and ‘Tonight Tonight’, and ‘Anaise!’ borrows from Muse’s ‘Panic Station’ with its low-slung bassline and stomping beat. ‘Run2Me’, meanwhile, is exactly the type of lightweight electropop its Prince-aping title would suggest, recalling the indie pop sound of Pumpkins imitators The Pains of Being Pure at Heart with its lovelorn lyrics and throbbing keyboards, whilst ‘Monuments’ is perhaps the album’s high point and a place where the production really shines, melding a fuzzy grunge groove with layers of synths.

Taken in isolation, it’s a solid album from a band now in their fourth decade of activity, but when compared to the rest of their output—especially their breakthrough Siamese Dream, the sprawling Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and the criminally underrated Adore—it’s hard to shift the feeling that Monuments is Corgan’s first record that doesn’t at least aspire to be a masterpiece. With its sister album, Teargarden’s concluding entry Day for Night slated for release later this year, we’ll just have to wait and see how the album’s modesty and scaled back ambitions fare in the context of the saga as a whole.

Live: Cast

Written by Dan Whiteley on . Posted in Music.

21st December

Academy 2

8/10

The word ‘underrated’ gets bandied about a lot in the music world—I shit you not, I read someone call Gary Barlow ‘underrated’ the other day—but Liverpool’s Cast are one band that genuinely seem to have slipped under the radar in recent years. Though they received critical acclaim and had a string of hit albums and singles during their heyday, time doesn’t seem to have bestowed Cast with the same mythical status as some of their Britpop peers, and since their reformation in 2010 the band have seemed to straddle the line between rock elder statesmen and cult favourites. Their December UK tour, which is to be followed by an as-yet-untitled new album, came to a close in Manchester on the 21st, and confirmed frontman John Power’s claims that the now-veteran band are sounding better than ever.

Opening in raucous fashion with ‘Time Bomb’ and ‘Promised Land’, they played a tight career-spanning set to their (admittedly, largely middle-aged) audience, all of whom had braved a particularly miserable December night to get involved. Keen to prove they’re not another cash-in reunion act, their recent free download single ‘Baby Blue Eyes’ got an airing early on in the set, sounding much more muscular and anthemic than its folky studio counterpart, to an encouragingly warm reception. The rest of the show, though, relied on tried-and-tested classics such as the upbeat Stones-y swagger of ‘Beat Mama’, the giddy pop of ‘Guiding Star’, and their signature ballad ‘Walkaway’, which gave the show its mandatory lighters-in-the-air moment.

Whilst the songs speak for themselves, it was the band’s longstanding chemistry that truly makes them so appealing to witness live; Power’s trebly, scouse-tinted wail has held up gracefully over time, and Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson’s guitar playing is some of the most innovative to come out of his era, shining particularly on ‘History’, where his effects-laden, otherworldly riff is pushed to the forefront—it’s not surprising that he moonlights as Robert Plant’s right hand man when not playing with Cast. The show ended on the rousing fan favourite ‘Alright’ from their landmark debut All Change, which is in many ways the quintessential Cast track—loud, proud and relentlessly optimistic, with its soaring “there ain’t nothing you can’t do” coda serving as a perfect four-minute antidote to the troubled times of the present day.