Суббота 3 Мар 2007, 1:54

So i was listening to MACHINA/The Machines of God yesterday and I realized about two songs in, that it was exactly 7 years since this album had been released (it was a leap year, so technically it came out on February 29th). It really is amazing how quickly time passes and that it feels like it was just yesterday that I was in 7th grade, eagerly waiting for the Pumpkins comeback album. What also I find amazing is that an album (especially one that is generally not garnered with glowing reviews) can have such staying power in my life. I really fucking love this album. It reminds me of so many different time periods from then til now (school bus to sspj, vacation in dominican republic, chris miller's car, walking around st. anthony's, trains to the city). It's certaintly not perfect as it does contain in my opinion the worst song they had made (The Crying Tree of Mercury) as well as a song that although decent enough, did not deserve the epic prepotions it was given (Glass and the Ghost Children), it still contains some of their absolute best work. I was always so annoyed by how people slammed the album for sounding overproduced because of Flood's production. No one complains about Loveless sounding overproduced, and it's the same asthetic, it's just that the Pumpkins aren't a shoegaze band so people seemed to get pissed about it. Without sounding too gay, I will say the album delivers some incredible songs that flourish with springtime bliss, and epic depth of sound. Songs like Wound, Age of Innocence, and I of the Mourning have all become staples of my mixtapes over these past seven years. The Everlasting Gaze and Heavy Metal Machine both have become my daydream rock anthems (I usually picture cars exploding and people rejoicing in the fires in a sort of post-apocolyptic Terminator/Mad Max kinda thing). Songs like Stand Inside Your Love, and Try, Try, Try, deserved so much more cred in the pumpkins canon, and should have been huge hits. It broke my heart when they announced their impending breakup a few months later, because i was so taken with this album and so convinced it was a rebirth, and a beginning of a new era of the band, (little did I know that D'Arcy had already quit 5 months before the album was even released.) My advice to everyone is to not believe the hype (or in this case lack of), and to give this album a chance.

(PS. as much as i splooge over this album, i still actually think MACHINA II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music is a little better, mainly cause it matches the excellence of this album, but without the aforementioned 'bad stuff')