Smashing Pumpkins- ATUM (November 15, 2022; January 31, 2023; April 21, 2023) • Page 5

Billy lost the ability to write a memorable melody.

 

Yep. Don’t even get me started on the lyrics too. Word salad galore.

 

At this point I just want the remastered Machina. Don’t need any more new music.

 

Machina is the first SP album I really enjoyed front to back. It was also my first SP album purchased upon release.

 

The 3rd act digital/full release vinyl has been delayed 2 weeks until may 5th

 

This might be my favorite thing from the new stuff so far.

 

So I just watched Murder Mystery 2 on Netflix and Spellbinding was the closing song. Definitely surprised me (also surprised at how much I laughed during that movie).

Makes sense now, that chorus is so pop rock and so unlike SP.

 

wow "spellbinding" is great!! the single disc reduction i'm going to make of this album is going to knock so hard

 

I've never heard of Yeat before but a pretty great response from Billy.

Also, just realized the final album of Autm comes out tomorrow.

 

Skimming through this now having not heard any of the 33. Embracer is cool

 

Finishing up my first listen of Part 3 now. Initial reaction is it's probably the best of the three. But god why is Intergalactic 9 minutes long? There's not a single interesting moment in that song.

I think the highlights are Harmageddon and Pacer.

 

There are some really great moments across the 3 parts....unfortunately as with nearly all double/triple albums (and in attempting to tell a story in the midst of it) there are bound to be some throwaways....still overall very enjoyable to me

 

Listening to this now and it's....fine...I guess? It's on brand that this SP "reunion" can't even be done right as it seems no one is willing to rock the boat and tell Billy "No, there is no need to release a 20-song synth-pop record and no you DON'T need a 33-song opus at this point."

 

I found about 11 out of 33 songs that I didn’t hate, but even if the album was just the 11 songs it would still just be OK. The lyrics are really bad and I swear Billy can’t write a melody for shit anymore.

 

Yeah that song in particular...what is going on there?

 

Have to say after my weekend long relistens I really like this one!

 

yeah i just finished the full atum experience and uh i enjoyed myself for the most part?

 

a few embarrassing moments and lyrically just nonsensical garbage but... this is some of my favorite post-split pumpkins stuff. and i'm working on my reduction and it already rules

 

ok here's my attempt at a reduction

1. atum
2. that which animates the spirit
3. the good in goodbye
4. hooligan
5. the canary trainer
6. cenotaph
7. steps in time
8. in lieu of failure
9. harmageddon
10. pacer
11. the culling
12. every morning
13. avalanche

pretty happy with this for how fast i came up with the sequence. there were brutal cuts????

 

Really funny that it includes none of the singles.

That's not a criticism, mind you. Just find it funny that bands deliberately choose particular songs to get people hyped for an album and promote it and you're just like, "Yeah, fuck that."

 

I've had the song Harmageddon on repeat a lot of the last week. Fits well on my gym playlist.
Although it bugs me that there's a song on here called "In Lieu of Failure" where he doesn't say that title in the lyrics, but in Harmageddon he repeats the line "in lieu of failure." I feel like those song titles were supposed to be flipped lol

I'm gonna try and listen through this entire trilogy today/tomorrow and make my abridged version.

 

Not really a Pumpkins fan, but I've been listening to this for research and there's alot of cool stuff in here.

 

“canary trainer” is like the first piece of corgan songwriting in forever to put me in the mind of like zwan and “home” from machina ii. such a good song

 

I think I have pretty sane expectations for 2023-era Smashing Pumpkins. They're not going to release another Siamese Dream.

I really, really liked Shiny and Oh So Bright. To me that was a "best case" of what current Pumpkins can sound like.

Then they follow that up with Cyr and Atum and that is like 55 songs of mostly filler and not nearly enough guitars or good songwriting. This is exactly what I don't want from them.

I wish they would have stuck with the Shiny script (and also, the producer, who clearly helped).