I’ve felt a little down the last
couple of days. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I also can’t deny it.
Then this afternoon I started to
recover and now I feel pretty good, just really hungry. I’ll be eating my
dinner as I write this review.
Disc 693 is…. Gish
Year of Release: 1991
What’s up with the Cover? Behold the might
of the fisheye lens! Just look at Billy’s hands – they appear enormous! The
fisheye – guaranteed to instill any picture with artistic import! OK, maybe not
this one.
How I Came To Know It: My friend Greg introduced me to
the Smashing Pumpkins when we were room-mates. I always thought they were OK,
but never liked them as much as him. I bought this one years later, remembering
that I liked a few of the songs.
How It Stacks Up: I have only two Smashing Pumpkins albums; this one
and “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” I’ll put “Gish” second.
Rating: 3 stars
What a depressing bunch these Smashing Pumpkins are,
but like the Smiths before them they fill a listening niche when you are
feeling a bit wan and unwanted. Kind of perfect for me the last couple of days,
and yet still not enough connection to call “Gish” great.
Which is odd, because objectively, this is a pretty
great album. Given it is the Pumpkins' first it has a remarkably mature sound, although
that could just be that early nineties grunge-fuzz that tends to blend
everything together into a low hum.
Despite the fuzz, the power of the songwriting
shines through very well. “Bury Me”
is a powerful blast of pure rock and roll that had me thinking favourably of
Soundgarden. “Bury Me” doesn’t have
that hint of funk that Soundgarden has, but the ability to crunch a groove and
not lose the tune is here. “Tristessa”
is also a strong track with punk sensibilities and a bravery to break
everything down musically and not lose the listener. It helps that a grand
James Iha guitar solo immediately follows the breakdown.
On the ‘rockin’ out’ front I also wanted to like the
album’s lead off song, “I Am One,”
but somewhere early in my listening experience I got this idea that it sounded
like a Guns N’ Roses song. Once the notion took hold it was hard to shake – after
each musical interlude, I kept expecting Billy Corgan to sing about dancing with Mr.
Brownstone or wanting to take me down to Paradise City. I doubt the band would appreciate
that, but since I called them proto-Screamo in my last review I think this is
an improvement.
The Pumpkins have a softer side as well, and “Gish”
has a couple of winners here in “Rhinoceros”
and “Crush.” Both these songs have big,
balloon-like sound with calm easy chords that amble their way along into
wistful melancholia. Corgan’s voice, which can have a bit too much scream in it
sometimes, sets a lovely tone here; innocent and thoughtful. Both tracks do a
good job of breaking up what would otherwise be a tiring wall of sound.
Unfortunately, other slow songs like “Suffer” and “Window Paine” fall into a droning self-absorption that fails to
connect. The lyrics on "Suffer" are particularly insufferable:
“All that you suffer is all that
you are
All that you smother is all that
you are”
Morrissey would be proud, but I’m not. “Window Paine” tries to have it both
ways, alternating between atmospheric drone and deconstructed feedback.
The album ends with “Daydream” featuring a vocal from bassist D’Arcy Wretzky. Her voice and
the song are both soft enough to be a palate cleanser after “Window Paine” but the song tries for art
and only manages trite.
There are plenty of good moments on “Gish” and the
talent is clearly there, but it only occasionally plucks my heart-strings, and so I don’t
put it on that often. When it does hit, like on “Bury Me” or “Rhinoceros”
it hits hard, but the moments are too intermittent to score more than three
stars out of five.
Best tracks: Rhinoceros, Bury Me, Crush,
Tristessa
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