Review: The Smashing Pumpkins- Monuments To An Elegy

Way back when the Teargarden by Kaleidoscope project first began, I was amazingly excited. 'A Song for a Son' was and is a pretty amazing song, and it set the bar pretty high for what was to come. And I thought that the other releases from the Pumpkins on the EPs and Oceania were pretty solid. I hardly thought they were up to snuff with the heyday iteration of the band's material, but I thought it was an improvement upon Machina I and a lot of Zeitgeist. I liked how the new stuff built upon the old, and that the songs still had that Pumpkins feel to them.

Monuments to an Elegy on the other hand is a pretty radical departure from the traditional Pumpkins formula. I once saw an interview where Billy Corgan said something along the lines of ,"people kept asking me why we didn't play these 3 minute pop songs. Uh, because we don't?" Somewhere along the line that changed, because a lot of this album, which clocks in at a very slim run time, seems very compact. I have seen reviews praising this album for its short run time, calling it the easiest Pumpkins album to digest. Is that necessarily a good thing? I kind of like my music on the more complex side, with songs that won't show all their secrets within the first listen. I feel like my major gripe with this album is that the scope of it is very narrow, with heavy guitars, some synths and basic drumming (courtesy of Tommy Lee, no I don't really have a strong opinion) dominating the album. There's not a lot of room for these songs to expand in the short time that each one takes up, and the lack of any dynamic shifts, unexpected chord progressions, or even guitar solos makes the songs a little formulaic.

It's this kind of stuff that really makes me wonder where this fits in with the rest of Teargarden by Kaleidoscope, the project that this album supposedly is a part of. The rest of the project may have had some weak moments, but there was a lot more atmosphere, dynamic and overall variety to the sounds. As for the lyrical substance here, there are some weak moments, but I also find there to be some compelling lyrical quips here and there.

This review may make it sound like this album is absolutely terrible, which is not the case in the slightest. I simply hold the Pumpkins to an extremely high standard (I mean, Corgan and his rotating crew have put out some amazing records and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is one of my favorite albums of all time), and the kind of mediocre set I heard here was pretty disappointing. There are some great moments on this album, but I feel like this album is a little too "easy" for a Pumpkins record, if that makes any sense. There has been talk that the follow up and final chapter to the project, Day for Night, will be more experimental, and I really hope for that, because if the experiment here was to make a middle of the road album, they definitely succeeded.

Out of a total of five stars, I give this:

What did you think of the album? Check back in for my opinions on the new single by kigo, "never knowing". I'll also be doing some year end lists at the end of the month.

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