"and the colour of your love is gray"
CYR, the double paradigm shifting album by The Smashing Pumpkins is a lot of things but simplistic is not one of them. Billy Corgan thinks deeply, I have the feeling he can't help it. As a person who sees and turns aspects of everyday life as entertainment and different seemingly mundane entertainment as elevated art, he seems to embrace what art can do and how it can shift peoples thinking, serving as sonic seeds sown of inspiration.
Corgan also has always seemed to do what he wants with his music, critics be damned and I love that about him. Surprisingly, on CYR, he has embraced a highly decorated sound. The songs are almost always adorned with crystal clear backing vox, with oohs and ahs, men's and women's harmonies done up as middle of the road pop rock. The result feels at once ABBA or Disney-fied in spots but I don't mean that as a dig. There is something brilliant, in fact, about a grunge rock icon discarding the dirty noise (though that is represented here too). Corgan also discards his very stellar guitar work, his divergent lead work of past records for, instead, synth sounds, arpeggios and such.
CYR in many ways embraces the motif of another double album, ELO's 1977 "Out of the Blue" (as well as their 83 back masking album "Secret Messages") especially "Anno Satana" but Corgan stirs in more colors and emotional paint. While the tones do have a bit of retro-ness, Corgan embraces a baroque pop sense and crushes it with elegant Europop tones, an ample potent amount of post punk heaviness while pushing disco pop glitter on many of the up beat tracks. At spots, I thought of Depeche Mode but also Fleetwood Mac fused with JPop, Gorillaz, and The Smashing Pumpkins (of course). Make no mistake, The Pumpkins, have mined some of these sounds. The track "Purple", (the politico post punk of) "Telegenix" and "Save Your Tears" with their lush heaviness and heavenly beauty feels, in some ways, as sisters of "Bullet with Butterfly Wings".
The amazing, sometimes vexing but thoroughly captivating aspect of CYR is how it feels so rock operatic while sometimes feels so vox populi pop forward. Corgan has created his own mythology (maybe pulling from Greek, Eastern, German, futuristic visions, and philosophies) twisted in lyrics that can feel sometimes cast in Shakesperean tempered syntax ("Twixt the field and the foal, unaided - Yet spun with the toil of an oath").
CYR, in the end, feels like an all inclusive fantasy (there is a reference to Xanadu after all) that fuses together a lot of disparate sounds and "things". The breezy, dark and light double album is (to me) a mixture of science fiction, baroque pop, post punk, Sailor Moon, The Never-ending Story, Mefistofele, glam, dance punk and disco with voluminous amounts of homo erotic glitter piled onto it. If time travel existed, it would make sense, it would be a wondrous thing to see The Smashing Pumpkins performing CYR in the middle of Flipper's Roller Disco Boogie Lounge in West Hollywood (in the early 80's) while pretty boys and girls skated around them in high.
CYR touches on the corruption of power, the saintliness in all of us, paints narratives of people with righteous indignation fighting the good fight and sometimes succumbing to that fight, that purpose. The album, overall, is hyper realistic, drawing mythical lines in the rock classicalism sand. It's tenderness feels purely wrought and while it clings to art rock, it swings broadly. This adoption of the lush disco feel on some of these songs feels purposeful to me. Disco, after all, despite the naysayers and haters (including myself) was a coming together of all types of people, gays, straight, trans, in all shapes, sizes and colors and the attacks (at the time) against the art form and culture around it was cast in toxic anti-gay, anti-woman and anti-people of color rhetoric. CYR does seem to reference pandrogyny or the idea of "the third gender" in "The Hidden Sun". The utter embracing of all gender roles and sexual orientations and while this may be (originally) an extreme artistic endeavor by some (performance art by Genesis P-Orridge and Throbbing Gristle), it's core concept is so relevant now. CYR feels like a fable-esque journey open to all and maybe some of the songs (you decide) serve as a dioramic struggle of the LGBTQIA+ community.
In CYR, The Smashing Pumpkins have shape shifted, transformed and it maybe the perfect time to do so. The pyrrhonistic Billy Corgan, within his artistry, seems to me to always have a deep longing to find love and meaning. It is there even while buried in some of his hard steely eyed, cynical edges. An artful dodger who can be as abrasive as he can be tender, there is more tenderness here.
-Robb Donker Curtius
(Down below are some of my scribble notes written out- notes by the way, from the first time I listened with jaded ears. those of you reading this have probably read some negative reviews of CYR. negative reviews bother me when any particular reviewer is not really listening intently, these reviewers will generally say things like "all the songs sound the same"- that is their level here and by the way, those reviewers oftentimes site that reason for not liking jazz. the point is that when artists shift their sound 'radiohead comes to mind' many listeners just can't take it- it makes me laugh)
1: The Colour of Love // with an automaton auto tune saturation it feels slightly misguided like when Rod Stewart ( the most organic raw blues rock pop provocateur) tried to go Disco
2: CYR // sci-fi post punk imaginings with a Vegas veneer, in some ways as pop as Shania Twain like 80's Disco punk
3: Confessions of A Dopamine Addict // **I like this** with it's robotic waltz and synth hook, Corgan's voice seems to fit perfectly in this plane, his aesthetic in an over reaching art rock way absolutely works here
4: Dulcet in E: Finds Corgan as a narrator of a dream pop manga (at heart) // that is what if feels like to me and only a grunge art rock god could attempt to pull this off
5: Wrath // made me think of Fleetwood Mac a bit - like hyper realistic Neverending Story stuff
6: Ramona // with the acoustic heart and machine beats is lush dystopia as a JPop love song
7: Anno Satana // a bit of Muse rock meets the Matrix
8: Birch Grove // steps on the toes of the CYR sound itself
9: Wyttch: feels like a sci-fi drug and sort of feel like a song that MJ might of penned after seeing Alita: Battle Angel if he had not passed (sorry)
10: Starrcraft: falls further into the surreal manga rabbit hole-- not bad but feels very 12 year old-esque (not that there is anything wrong with that)
11: Purple Blood: "despite all my rage" // very cool, very cool
12: Save Your Tears: core groove feels pretty pop but cool- love the vocal melody although the musicality might lack differences for derivative directions
13: Telegenix: old and new pumpkins sound // why am I thinking of Eminem // lovely embrace
14: Black Forest, Black Hills: grunge crashed with robotic drones- surreal, sci-fi organic
15:Adrennalynne- maybe too cute like the name // does feel character driven rock operatic
16: Haunted: purging baroque pop // horror pop // will grow on me
17: The Hidden: homo erotic glittery roller skating
18: Schaudenfreud: thump beat // mythology meets medieval / moves like a journey through a magical forest
19: Tyger, Tyger: appropriately stalks // tribal // mansion sleek // drum triggered synth
20: Minerva: upbeat car cruising fodder // mentions Xanadu // again roller skate worth // with fairy dust
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