AR: Siamese Dream

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream (1993)

Fresh from the tape deck of a Nyetian Youth 1986 Volvo comes the seminal alternative pop-rock opus Siamese Dream. This one wormed its way to the front of the queue by virtue of three little factoids - one, hombre Justin is back in town and all but requested the Ballad to be re-designated an all-Trigger, all-the-Dheintime endeavor. He seriously asked for a new genre of posts dedicated to "good restaurants in the 13th Street and Osborn area" (aka "Yelp for Dummies") and, when promised a post with a list of recs, uttered something to the effect of "I won't hold my breath - I've been waiting a year* for that Siamese Dream review." Ouch.

* - Gross hyperbole. It's been at most six months.

Two, as alluded to in the Volvo memory, SD holds the rare distinction of being a well-remembered constant-car-companion, an album I had to have listened to something like 300 times from 1993-1995. I recorded it from CD onto a Maxell cassette that on side A had Weezer's self-titled blue album* and on side B had this beast, and that tape - I never listened to the radio - was on constant play-and-flip, play-and-flip, rinse-repeat rotation every time I drove that car. And SD served as a soundtrack of choice for walkman-running all through high school, too, which meant that I also listened to it every time I jogged around the 'hood (which, guess what, was often. And yes, the chorus of "I... feel... no pain" was an uplifter on numerous occasions). And that doesn't even count the bajillion times I listened to it on disc in my bedroom over headphones. So we're talking back of my hand familiarity, 100-layered-guitar-track roars the equivalent of a country boy's crickets - it was practically ambient music for my particular niche of the San Antonio suburbs. So it's kinda a priority review independent of Justinian requests.

* - Hmmm - this seems off, as Weezer was released in 1994. So maybe the tape wasn't in the Volvo until fall of 1994?

Three, it was a routine answer from seventeen-to-nineteen year-old me* to the "what are the best, most perfect albums of all time?" question. I remember high school chum Brian Baker specifically asking me this question, and after listing some of the usual suspects (I think I probably gave The White Album and DSOTM as card-carrying-conformist type answers, so yeah, the more things change, etc.), I said "and from recent years it's Siamese Dream - there's no bad track on that album." It helps from a congenial conversation standpoint that BB had attended that previously referenced Pumpkins concert in 1994 and equally become enamored of the band / album of music, so we pretty much concretized the notion right there - SD was a short-lister. Of course, BB followed this up by claiming that some Rush album was also perfect, so it's not exactly an inspiring endorsement. Still, we had at least a fleeting two person consensus, and so it's about damn time I give it the Nyetian treatment.

* - I don't mean to make anything of the implication here that the 31-33 year-old me holds or will hold a different opinion - I think it's true, as I'll note below, that the back half of this album does dip a little bit - but the point of this little sentence is that this is a formative years, everyone knows rock achieved perfection in 1974 type of album for me. So you probably know the rating that's coming, and you may or may not agree on the "most perfect" part of this quote, but, um, what's done is done, and I'm not about to change my opinion on the well-ingrained. So there.

You can read all about the vagaries that made this album historically special in plenty of other locales, but I'll give the quick rundown here. Early nineties alternative rock - and this is unsurprising, given the ages of the purveyors of said rock - can be framed as a reinvention of popular genres from the '70s. "Punk with reverb" pretty much catches Nirvana's Nevermind, "introspective classic rock"gets Pearl Jam's Ten, and even grunge music (e.g., Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger) was largely an antithesis response to '70s-'80s hair-metal sheen and excess, a kind of anti-KISS. And then out of Chicago came the near-emo slacker prog rock revival. Smashing Pumpkins was a bit against the grain, with extended compositions, roaring look-at-me guitar solos, strings in the mix, etc. I.e. they violated some alt-norms, and in doing so carved their own niche well. They also escaped prog-retread territory by being overtly confessional - no songs about Ents and faeries here, just a whole lot fish-in-barrel-shooting depression-for-teenagers*. The combination was great, sort of introverted wrath, even as they walked the fine line of what would become overly woe-is-me emo rock in the coming decade.

* - Nyet Jones, smiling politely.

I keep writing "they" when I should write "he," as the other notorious thing about SD is that perfectionist/egoist Billy Corgan, the singer and rhythm guitarist, basically went nuts and took over the writing, playing, and everything else about the album. It's probably hyperbole, and everyone in the band is credited on the album, but the legend is that the band was at one another's throats, the drummer was in rehab, Corgan was having nervous breakdowns, the album was way over budget, you name it. So Billy, dissatisfied with everything that hadn't been played by himself, played everything - drums, bass, rhythm, leads, and probably those bells in "Disarm." Again, this is undoubtedly untrue, but with an album infamous for its Butch-Vig channels-Phil-Spector wall-of-sound and it's non-exaggerated hundreds of overdubbed guitar tracks, it's kind of darkly hilarious to imagine the band tyrant alone in the studio saying, "alright, this is take number 42 on guitar track 87 on the third track of the album. Dammit, get this right, Corgan!"

So the album's got an important place in alt-music generic history, and it's got a Rumours-esque recording story to give it that much more emotional girth. But the thing I love about it is plainly the way it sounds*: CRYSTALLINE. The ringing clean electrics throughout drip and splash with soothing clarity. The fuzzed out guitar armies resonate excellently, distorted enough to be angry but never so much as to be non-distinct. Acoustics cha-chung brilliantly. The lead vocals are relatively buried in the mix - hard to compete with all of those six-strings - but they pierce in appropriate moments and yield to the instrumental energy in others**. There are drum parts that are so plain as to be formulaic (drumrolls, slowing tom beats into song conclusions, etc.), but they are sitting so perfectly in context that, sorry, the phrase "everything in its right place" occurs subconsciously. To steal a line that I'm sure I've referenced on other occasions, this is another album that sounds round - well-circumscribed bass, juxtaposed lead-back vocals, and blah blah blah you get the point. I *DIG* the aesthetics on the visceral level, and given how overwhelmingly busy this album is - it's one of those headphones-demanding, sounds here and there discs - it's amazing that the clutter is so distinct. And that is the immediate thing I think when I catch that twin-kid-cover - good, complex songwriting that moves with energy and brilliantly never steps on itself.

* - Plus, you know, iconic cover. A title that references a lyric from the album and not a mere track title. These things count. :)

** - This is a point in the album's favor - I tend to not care about lyrics too much unless the music indicates to me I should. I mean, a folk ballad in Bob Dylan's voice is so directly about imagery and content that it would be weird to listen to Zimmerman and not think about the lyrics, right? So the mix on SD has the opposite effect for me - the vocals are buried, so other than latching onto the earworm choruses, I don't pay too much attention to what Corgan mumbles. And this helps, because there are lines that are pretty embarrassing, and that would probably damage my opinion of the work. But since the produced seemed to heavily emphasize sound relative to message, I tend to do the same when I listen, and that tends to emphasize strengths of the disc.

This aesthetic hits from the get-go; SD opens on a snare-drum roll, demonstrates the idea by allowing a clean, simple, flanged electric guitar intro, adds a snare beat, then a rumbling bass, and then... GUITAR ARMY. Thus starts "Cherub Rock," a five star album opener if there ever were one - the intro settles into a more typical rhythm / lead / bass, verse-chorus-verse arrangement, but it explodes with clenched-fist frustration buoyed by an, I don't know, angelic pop-rock-song that fills rooms. It even has the uber-classic anti-sell-out pre-chorus - "Who wants honey? / Long as there's some money," followed by Corgan's dismissal, "LET ME OUT." And if you ever need to restore your faith in the power of the eagle-screaming 16-bar exquisitely tight yet frayed and frantic guitar solo, might I introduce you to the 3:09 mark. A nice gimmick repeat of the song's intro leads this in, and jet engines nod in appreciation as the lead soars on this bridge en route to a final anthemic chorus. Classic album-opening that puts everything out there from moment one. And as a sidenote - it's imminently playable by amateur guitarists like myself. Well, not the solo, but the song proper got many a play-along in an above-garage bedroom, I tell you what. "CR" was, as I recall, the first single off the disc, and legendary friend Christastrophe tried it out for a talent show once upon a time.

Out of the ashes of "Cherub Rock" comes one of my favorite guitar sounds, the Harley Davidson Doppler-roar of the riff-driven scream-song, "Quiet." It's a one-two punch - you are mistaken when you thought that "CR"'s crash ending meant the band was spent - and it rocks so effectively that SP would continue to milk this vibe for albums to come (see "Zero"). The album finally yields to sanity for track 3, the hit single "Today." It's another track that milks quiet-loud dynamics for all they're worth AND features a sing-along chorus with the simple-grin idiocy of "Today is the greatest day I've ever known!" And it has an epic KEY CHANGE bridge, for pete's sake! Inspiring somehow in spite of its on-paper cheesiness, the toy-guitar opening is reminiscent of something the FLips might have done, and the song generally serves as a pop-perfect anthem piece. No shock that it climbed the charts.

With a heavily-edited/chopped, Eastern-sounding riff intro backed by bass and then leading into a single-strand guitar melody, "Hummer" - all 6:57 of it - is a nice example of the guitar splash sound AND the alt-prog vibe to which I referred earlier. Despite its frequent guitar roars, it's a come down tune from the energetic openers. It's long, with many seamless composed sections fusing together (including another delicious guitar solo) on the way to the album's first dream sequence ambient-ish breakdown at 4:30. The song becomes a dream jam of interweaving lines as it slowly fades out - this is the type of thing that surely irked the alt-punks, but it hits all kinds of soothing for me. When the psychedelic dust settles, things pick back up with one of the most overt guitar-hero homages in "Rocket," another single off the album. If you can't hear the guitar solo from Queen's "We Will Rock You" here, I don't know if I can help you. This is another multi-section fuzzed out rocker - the vibe is actually somewhat Bealtey in moments, with a "Tomorrow Never Knows" drone and a quasi-Eastern bridge of Harrisonian ilk - and another one with a fist-pumping chorus "Free - I shall be free." It collapses into guitar cacophony, just to remind that it. is. alt. not. pop. Yeah, right. :)

Speaking of pop, chug-a-chung... "Disarm." This was another huge single off the album (I can't even hear it without picturing that black-and-white video*), an acoustic-plus-strings-and-bells singer-songwriter venture. It's build-up is pretty perfect for this kind of piece, up to and including its over-the-top melodramatic chorus and heart-wringing vocals. Are you sensing a theme here? Interestingly enough, it has practically the exact same chord progression as another hit from the time, The Cranberries' "Zombie." And I can play both of them!

* - For better or worse, I also can't help but remember that Mike NTPB and I wrote a parody-thing of this song for Duke TIP's 1994 talent show. It was horribly stupid - I think it involved the quad and chemicals? - and in one of our more brilliant collective moments, we decided at the very last minute not to play it and avoided embarrassing ourselves horribly. Success.

"Soma" closes side A, and is surprisingly still my favorite track on the disc. On the one hand, it's completely routine, a volume-dynamic song that jolts the listener by exploding midway through. But on the other, it's a space-psychedelic song with hints of piano, synthesizers, an infinity of guitars (acoustic, electric, and dirty-dirty-distorted), and a tranquil, near spoken-word vocal that converts to sinister snarl by the end. It screams "Carpe Diem!" *effectively*, had a mind-melting guitar solo, and manages to crash into water for its outro, giving a second dose of space that sounds as though its bubbling from 'neath the ocean. Great, epic piece on an album full of them.

One strike against SD is that it's a little front-heavy; the mean is definitely on side A. It's indeed difficult to imagine how the intensity could have been maintained. But they certainly tried (and succeeded) with the Hendrix-y guitar freak-out (surrounding another pot-haze soothe-bridge) "Geek U.S.A." This song absolutely sizzles as it maintains the prog aesthetic, giving us another entry in the bleeding-ear frenetic guitar solo category at the 3:00 mark, a meandering spazz-out that drives the song until the whole thing crashes into a grunge -dirge at the song's conclusion. This trails "Soma" as the album highlight by a very, very small margin - it's one of the lesser known tracks from the disc, but it absolutely cooks.

The album definitely steps down a notch from here - not to say that it isn't good, but the minor drop-off definitely occurs between "Geek U.S.A." and "Mayonnaise." The latter is a distortion-ballad that spins more volume dynamics, going all the way down to just Billy-and-guitar for its bridge. Solid, but not up to the quality of the first seven tracks. "Spaceboy" stays in this mid-to-slow-tempo vein to the album's detriment; it's another solid acoustic-plus-strings ballad, and effectively leaves the album in a down mode. Probably my least favorite track on the album.

Fortunately out of the doldrums comes screaming "Silverfuck," a Sonic Youth Lite sprawling tune that juxtaposes tom-tom jungle polyrhythms, extended instrumental howls and a capella vocals. It even opens with studio banter! It is utterly spacious and the height of proggy-indulgence on the disc. The "bang bang you're dead" section teeters on awkward, though the rest of this track maintains an effective sinister vibe. And the sonic explosions are way more than effective, giving off the type of energy that facilitates completing, e.g., laps on cinder Clark tracks. A colossal rock star, feedback and scratch noise-drenched conclusion yields to "Sweet Sweet," a glistening and, yes, saccharine tune that is best described as a shimmery guitar lullabye. It's pretty and over before it begins - one of the more successful abuses of the chorus pedal ever.

"Luna" is the questionable album closer, another syrupy ballad with a sing-along chorus, this time the plain "I'm in love with you." The tune is tinged with strings and Eastern-sounding guitar flourishes. Pretty enough, but again, a little too much of the same trick from the three ballads on side B of this album.

So I'll reiterate a footnote from above and note that my 32 year-old self would probably not say that this is one of those "most perfect" albums. It may be purely the biasing effect of the SP albums that followed, but the qualities that render parts of, e.g., Mellon Collie annoying - the whiny, insincere-and-clichéd BC aspect - are retrospectively evident on the back half of SD. True enough that these tunes feel more direct and visceral than the ones the evoke those accusations, but still, three of the six tunes on side B have this honey-dripping feel to them, and it's just too much. THAT said - I'd be a liar to Nyet's everywhere if I tried to pretend this weren't a DI disc. Fantastic opener, fantastic sound, a wealth of singles, one five star/ three four star tunes and solid throughout, AND a seminal alternative album from when I was fifteen? Please. So pack this one in your Flight 815 carry-on and enjoy - after all these listens, I'll still gladly hit the crystalline sound of Siamese Dream and celebrate the fleeting moment in which prog and emotion, angsty guitar screams and confessionals, stayed just this side of melodramatic excess. Fish-in-a-barrel, sure, but the gunshots in this period ring beautifully.

Status: Desert Island Recommended

Nyet's Fave: "Soma"