1) The Everlasting Gaze; 2) Raindrops + Sunshowers; 3) Stand Inside Your Love; 4) I of the Mourning; 5) The Sacred and Profane; 6) Try, Try, Try; 7) Heavy Metal Machine; 8) This Time; 9) The Imploding Voice; 10) Glass and the Ghost Children; 11) Wound; 12) The Crying Tree of Mercury; 13) With Every Light; 14) Blue Skies Bring Tears; 15) Age of Innocence
One last hurrah for the original Pumpkins run, and Corgan & co give it their everything. The culmination of everything the Pumpkins recorded in the 90s.
Key tracks: "The Everlasting Gaze", "I of the Mourning", "This Time"
In the beginning Machina/The Machines of God was to be The Smashing Pumpkins’ return to form. As brilliant as the synthesized and understated Adore was, it caused a huge dip in the band’s popularity when everyone who had bought into Billy Corgan’s crunchy teen angst riffs suddenly weren’t quite as keen on his gothic introspection. So, plans were made to kick back into the familiarly guitar-heavy territory, and not just that but to do it even more ambitiously than ever before. Freshly cleaned up Jimmy Chamberlain was invited back into the band to replace the drum machines with his machine-strength drumming. The upcoming release was to be another double album, and not just that but also a concept album about sci-fi dystopias and the music industry. There were to be tie-in writings, an animated show, ARGs… and then the label said no. So the extra tracks got cut. All the extraneous non-album material got cut. The concept got largely cut – still present in the core of the songs but not tied together anymore. Bassist D’Arcy Wretzky left the band. And somewhere along the way, the album stopped being the next ambitious chapter in the band’s book and instead, the last.
The “cyber goth rock” sound planned for Machina got morphed somewhere along the line too, or at least it gained a new dimension as the plans started to finalise. Machina plays out like a pseudo best-of of the Pumpkins’ various styles. The muscular, heavy rock riffs, the radio-friendly stadium rock, the shoegazed-out walls of sound dreamily washing over the listener, the sense of understated beauty they sometimes revealed and the extended rock-outs all get their moment in the spotlight; only Adore’s synth ballads are missing, largely because they wouldn’t have had room for Chamberlin’s powerful drumming. In their place are more notable keyboard parts that hang in the background of most songs, accentuating the atmosphere and the emotional highs and lows, in practice giving Machina its own sound even when it takes a lot from the band’s history. It’s both futuristic and traditional at the same: bringing back the powerhouse rock that made the Pumpkins’ name but looking into the future. The short future, in any case – Machina’s 15-track run has a constant sense of finality to it, the constant musical climaxes coming across like one epic send-off after another. There’s a glimmer of bittersweet jubilation everywhere, with frequent references to things ending and goodbyes being said but played with a joy in the heart rather than falling all over in tears.
The miraculous thing is that somehow all the setbacks have made the band sound stronger than ever, downright defiantly so. As a group of performers the Pumpkins are incredibly rejuvenated: they’re incredibly hungry for glory and downright fierce throughout Machina, fighting against the tide with every bone of their body and pushing everything through. Chamberlain especially shines once again, almost like he felt like he had something to prove after his absence (another reason why “The Everlasting Gaze is such a powerful intro song – check out the drumming at the end). But Corgan’s songwriting is also similarly strengthened. The Adore sessions seem to have had a lasting effect on his songwriting: the subtler and more melody-heavy approach allowed Corgan to refine that side of his writing and make it consistent, and that same effect is present all over Machina. There’s depth and nuance to the songs here no matter what form they take and an incredible amount immortal melodies and stunner moments of songcraft presented consistently throughout. Even something like “Heavy Metal Machine” that at first sounds like a near-aimless, distortion-filled monster true to its name hides an excellently evocative melody deep within itself that bubbles to the surface when the song begins to develop new parts.
What all that means is that despite its underdog reputation, Machina doesn’t just match its other Pumpkins counterparts – often it even towers over them. “The Everlasting Gaze”, “Stand Inside Your Love”, “I of the Mourning”, “Try, Try, Try” and “This Time” all stand proudly among the likes of “1979” and “Disarm” – so evocatively atmospheric, powerfully backbone-kicking and sonically rich they are. The ten minutes of “Glass and the Ghost Children” breeze by and carry the same strength throughout, something which rarely has been the case with Pumpkins’ extended moments. “The Imploding Voice” is like Corgan finally cracking the perfect harmony of noise and melody that he always wanted to reach while “Wound” does the same by merging together the more sensitive melodies with the band’s muscularity. “Age of Innocence” sounds liberated and in peace with itself – something that’s always been rare with the oft-tight-wound band. This extends to the album as a whole - the originally reactionary nature and its difficult development have left no traces and if anything, Machina sounds the most naturally grown and flowing of all the band’s albums. There are definitely a couple of weaker cuts involved thanks to Corgan’s need to always release as much music as possible and ultimately the album could have benefited by dropping off “The Crying Tree of Mercury” and “Blue Skies Bring Tears”, both too plodding to withstand their own length. But overall it doesn’t matter – Machina’s 70-odd minutes hardly feel so long thanks to the consistent excitement and rush, both on the band’s and the listener’s side.
In other words, for me this is the quintessential Pumpkins release. Gish is good but it’s obviously the first steps; I can see why people fall in love with the really good Siamese Dream but to me it’s still in search of the final puzzle piece; Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness features a filler song for every stone cold classic; Adore is one of the band’s best but very atypical of them. Machina brings together all the elements that come to my mind when I think of The Smashing Pumpkins and it presents them brilliantly. It’s the last proper release of their first incarnation, and the one that ultimately cemented their greatness while becoming one hell of a farewell. When I’m asked to define Pumpkins’ sound, Machina is the first thing that comes to my mind.
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