Genre: Alternative Rock
Year: 1995
Year I discovered it: Probably 1996
Mellon Collie and the Infinite
Sadness was my
favorite album for a long time and a big part of my childhood, during which I
listened almost exclusively to alternative rock played on radio stations.
Listening to this album brings me back to long summer days in the mid-90’s,
when I still had my childlike wonder and hadn’t been disillusioned with the
world and turned bitter, pessimistic and cynical yet. The instrumental opening is the perfect
introduction to the album. It makes me think of a peaceful sunset with the sun
disappearing over the horizon in those last few piano key notes, transitioning
to “Tonight, Tonight”, my favorite song from age 10 to 12 and in all honesty
probably the best song on the album. While listening to it I would close my
eyes and imagine that I was in Neverland, having adventures with Peter Pan.
Listening to it now it’s not hard to remember why. The orchestral background
music with the string section just makes you feel like you’re flying and going
on some epic adventure if you close your eyes, and deeply listen. And then the
lyrics “believe in me” just kind of evoke Peter Pan to me, like how fairies die
if you ever say you don’t believe in them (I hope typing out that sentence
doesn’t count!). I spent quite a bit of time in Neverland myself as a child. I
was a big fan of the book, but I never liked the Disney movie. Of course, now
if I try to go back to Neverland I’m branded a pirate, if I can even get there
in the first place. Growing up sucks. It’s all a mindset anyway, child versus
adult. If I could just get back to a childlike mindset I could easily sneak back
in...well anyway, enough about that. I’m rambling. I always loved the music video
to it as well, based on the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. Once I saw the actual film years later, I
knew immediately where Smashing Pumpkins had gotten the idea from. That
sneering moon face is unmistakable. It makes me wonder about what the band
intended to put out versus how the listener interprets it. I’ve never really
gotten an early 1900’s sci-fi vibe off the song if I’m just listening to it
without the music video. I’m not even really thinking of the music video when I
listen to the song on its own. A song like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is inseparable
from its music video, but not so with this song. And probably most songs, all
things considered. But if you look at the cover of the album this was the vibe
they were going for, a sort of art nouveau sci-fi energy vibe.
To be honest though, I’ve always
kind of skipped around to the tracks I like when listening to this album. I
find about half of the other songs on this album a bit too noisy and skippable.
Today if I want to hear something calm and soothing, I’ll still occasionally listen
to “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans”, “Galapagos” and “Cupid de Locke” (especially
“Cupid de Locke”). It brings to my mind fairies and magic. If fairies are real somewhere
in this vast universe and multiverse and have their own type of music, it must
sound like this. Then there’s “1979”, also calm and soothing but in a different
way. You get feelings of nostalgia and longing for childhood listening to this
song. Even though the song is about the singer’s nostalgia and not mine, this song
transports me back to the 90’s. Hanging out with friends in elementary school
on the playground, getting into all sorts of mischief. The good old days. I
think that’s what the song is supposed to do; make you think about times gone
by, no matter when those times were for you. For the singer it was 1979, for me
it was more like 1997. These songs (and a few others I haven’t mentioned) actually
seem like they belong on the same album together with “Tonight, Tonight”. Songs
like “Fuck You (An Ode to No One)” and “Love” are loud and heavy, and a bit
grating on the ears in comparison to these highly symphonic pieces, and I say
this as someone who was a metalhead as a teen so it’s not as if I don’t like
heavier music in general. This should have been two separate albums, really,
one for the heavier songs and one for the lighter songs.
One of the heavier songs I do
like is “Where Boys Fear to Tread”; maybe it’s all because of the title, but
this song brings to my mind a more innocent, childlike darkness, fear and negativity.
Like the soundtrack to a nightmare you might have had as a child that made you
wake up screaming and running to your parent’s bedroom. Until the first part of
the next song “Bodies” starts with this awful sound that makes you think your
CD got scratched and ruined or something. Was this some practical joke? You’re
not Type O Negative, Smashing Pumpkins, you don’t get to pull pranks on your
albums to make us think our radio is busted or something.
Then there’s “Bullet with
Butterfly Wings”, which I find much more relatable today than I did as a kid, with
its chorus “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage”. A line that
came to mind every now and then when I was stuck working in call centers;
despite my anger, I was powerless. That opening lyric “The world is a vampire”
would work great in a goth song. The world really is a vampire, in a way.
Draining you of your innocence, your youth, and sometimes your sanity. It’s a
bit of jaded, real world adult angst thrown in with all of this magical and
nostalgic energy from the other songs. Even though I like it, it feels out of
place quite frankly.
In all, there’s something for all
the sides of my personality in this album. The inner-child, and the dark gothy side.
Maybe that’s kinda why it should have been two separate albums, I don’t know.
No comments:
Post a Comment