December 19th, 2008 8:53am
I Can’t Protect You
The Smashing Pumpkins “No Surrender”
Despite many valid, harsh criticisms of their most recent tour, The Smashing Pumpkins are still more than capable of producing very good new songs, even if they come a bit more sporadically these days. “No Surrender,” a song written and performed during the band’s residency in San Francisco, is a mellow composition with an abundance of negative space and bright guitar notes that seem to blink in and out like white Christmas lights. The melodies are lovely, but at least in terms of Billy Corgan’s discography, atypically understated. Though the piece has its subtle dynamics, there is no bombast or drama, just this slow, meditative drift between delicate thoughts and emotions. Corgan’s vocal performance is also rather understated, and focused primarily on the lower register of his limited, trebly singing voice. He sounds relaxed and mature, and some turns of phrase sound absolutely gorgeous in a way specific to his body of work. The general sound of “No Surrender” is not without precedent in his catalog — the psychedelic tone owes something to the Gish era, and there are echos of the brilliant Mellon Collie outtake “Set The Ray To Jerry” — but the song certainly points to a more promising and rewarding future for the band than the bland excesses of many of the pieces recently showcased on tour.
Buy it from Amazon.
12/19/08 9:59 am
You’re right, Matt — songs like this and a couple of the songs on their American Gothic EP give me hope that not everything is sour about the new Pumpkins. Still, their next album is going to have to be a substantial reversal for me to consider paying much attention to them. Billy’s just been too hit or miss since the conclusion of Pumpkins mk 1.
12/19/08 11:04 am
I’m just kinda lukewarm on American Gothic — those songs aren’t objectionable, but they just feel kinda neither here nor there to me. As far as recent material goes, I quite enjoy about a third of Zeitgeist (”Doomsday Clock,” “Seven Shades of Black,” “That’s The Way,” “Tarantula,” etc), and stuff like this song, “Superchrist,” “GLOW,” “99 Floors.” “As Rome Burns” is pretty good too, and it seemed like “The March Hare” could be pretty good. I just think he needs to focus more, and ease up on the overlong, dirgey stuff. It really annoyed me when some of the more intense Pumpkins fans would come here and act as if I was totally anti-new material, because I’m not. I just don’t think it’s all of uniform quality, and in a concert situation, I’d rather skip an aimless 20 minute jam when they could use that time to play any number of songs from a rich back catalog, or stronger recent songs like “No Surrender,” which wasn’t included in the last round of touring.
12/19/08 2:45 pm
[...] Matthew Perpetua, Fluxblogger: The melodies [of “No Surrender”] are lovely, but at least in terms of Billy Corgan’s discography, atypically understated. Though the piece has its subtle dynamics, there is no bombast or drama, just this slow, meditative drift between delicate thoughts and emotions. Corgan’s vocal performance is also rather understated, and focused primarily on the lower register of his limited, trebly singing voice. He sounds relaxed and mature, and some turns of phrase sound absolutely gorgeous in a way specific to his body of work. [...]
12/20/08 12:56 am
thanks for posting this. i used to be obsessed with this band but gave up a while ago. this is quality.
12/20/08 11:04 am
It actually kind of sounds like Yo La Tengo!
12/20/08 12:26 pm
I’d argue that this song is in the “Glynis” canon of SP songs along with “Set the ray..” or “Cherry” or “Annie Dog” or “Never Lost” or “La Dolly Vita” or “Crush” or “Wound”. They are the type of songs that don’t really belong to a certain era of the band, but to a certain strain in Corgan’s songwriting.
12/20/08 1:17 pm
Yeah, it definitely fits in with that general strain, and those are all very good songs. “Shame,” that kinda fits in too. I’d love for him to focus on that sort of thing — just imagine an entire record with that sort of vibe!
12/21/08 1:44 am
but then we’d have the same type of songs. What I like is that Pumpkins albums have a borderline mixtape feel. Even if you distilled Mellon Collie to one CD of “the best” songs you’ll get many different styles. “33″ is nothing like “Zero” and “Porcelina” is not like “1979″ and it’s not like “Tonight Tonight” or “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” or “Galapagos” or “Muzzle” or “Jellybelly” or Here is no why”. Think about it. All of those songs are on the same album and they are all very distinctive. You would lose that if he made an album with one complete vibe.
12/21/08 9:42 am
That is very true, but I’m thinking more of something like Adore, which has a more consistent aesthetic.
12/21/08 12:29 pm
You’re talking about production aesthetic in a topic about song style. “Ava Adore” is not like “Shame”. Same production value, but the feel of those songs are completely different.
12/21/08 2:15 pm
Sorta, not quite. Though there is variation in Adore, it’s very much a narrow continuum, but all the songs are coming from the same place more or less, and fit together as this romantic quasi-goth album. The songs don’t all have to be the same for a record to have a particular vibe. Like, if you look at the Pumpkins records that have a more consistent vibe — ie, Adore, Gish, Zeitgeist — you can probably pick out a song or two that is at the center of the scale emotionally and musically, and all the other tracks are a bit more or less from where that song is. So with with Adore, it’s probably “Shame,” and with Gish, probably “Siva,” and with Zeitgeist, probably “Bring The Light.” If you do it for Siamese Dream, maybe the baseline song is “Geek USA.” So you know, it’d be kinda nice if he was to do a record where that baseline was more like “No Surrender.” Does that make more sense?
12/21/08 3:44 pm
Makes some sense, but I don’t agree. The production is narrow, the personality/feel in the songs is not. Corgan centered Adore around a theme (”love” as he said in an interview) and you get that which each song whether it’s a bit dark, simple, sappy, nice, pensive, or sad. That’s where you get the mix-tape effect. What you’re looking for, Matt, is an album of pensive SP songs like “No Surrender”, “Glynis”, et. al.
12/24/08 1:50 am
call me crazy, but i pine for the many, many abandoned Zwan tunes that did, indeed, rock the house. not for nothing, but it seems like Billy couldn’t handle being in a band with other people who could write songs.
then again, i have it on pretty good authority that a coupla Zwans couldn’t handle being in a band with Billy, just for different reasons.