#524 The Smashing Pumpkins - Oceania

For a while there, the Pumpkins were the most overtly adventurous of the 90's alt-rock heavy hitters: Mellon Collie was a kaleidoscopic jaunt through more styles than any album of the era, and Adore's stark iciness was, if nothing else, a bold move. But then came the lukewarm Machina, and a strikingly samey comeback album in Zeitgeist. By the time Oceania dropped I'd more or less given up on Corgan and his increasingly dippy excursions into mesiahdom, but I decided to give it a chance. Heck, I'll listen to anything once.

The result is a good balance between Machina's forgettable messiness and Zeitgeist's forgettable saminess, which is actually kind of a good thing. The beats are crisp, the guitar parts shimmering as huge as they did on Mellon Collie, its a perfectly good album to have on in the background: it's all quite listenable, and rarely  boring.

But its instructive that I sent this to Geoff and he commented that there weren't a lot of memorable moments. And he's right, after it was over I couldn't hum a single melody, repeat a single line, had no standout track I was dying to return to. This is partially to a powerfully overproduced sheen: raw grit has rarely been the Pumpkins' strength, but more so than usual everything is gelcap smooth. I guess the Cut/Copy bounce of One Diamond, One Heart is noteworthy, but I can't say its my favorite track on the album. Better than could be expected, but this is coming from someone who's spend a decade or two lowering expectations 3.5/5