Reconsidering Machina #2

This is part two in a series in which I learn to love, or at least like or tolerate, the Smashing Pumpkins album "Machina/the machines of god."

Surprise, surprise! I'm actually beginning to enjoy some of these songs! Many of them are what I would call "pretty." The melodies aren't as strong as what you find on earlier Pumpkins albums, true enough, but they're pleasant. I think this is a good companion to Adore. You can't really compare it to the first three albums. At this point in their career, the Pumpkins were a different band than the one that hit big in the mainstream. In some places, you can hear the roots of Billy Corgan's solo album.

The majority of these songs are beautiful and dreamy. There are a few harder songs, and they work reasonably well. "The Everlasting Gaze" is a Pumpkins classic, or at least a near-classic. "Glass And The Ghost Children" is pretty intense, but suffers from the long, three-part construction. Keep the first part, do something different with it, make it go somewhere, and you've got a keeper. "Heavy Metal Machine" gets better every time I listen to it. It could be more intense, and the whispers near the end could go, but otherwise it's pretty good.

There are only a few songs on the album, so far, that I still hate. The others, I'm starting to enjoy. I'm starting to see what Billy was going for with the sound of this album. It's still the worst Pumpkins album, but it's not as bad as I first thought. It's a grower.

Favorite songs so far:

"The Everlasting Gaze"
"Raindrops + Sunshowers"
"Try, Try, Try"
"This Time"