haha, lets not get started on this again!

Mellon Collie for me. I love the variety of styles/genres on MCIS. Here's my order:
1. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
2. Adore
3. Siamese Dream
4. Gish
5. Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music
6. Machina/The Machines of God

yeah I'm might as well do my ranking as well.

1. MCIS 2nd disc is perfect to me.

2. Adore beautiful, best lyrics, best singing, no jimmy makes it unique and fragile.

3. MCIS 1st disc a little more flawed than the 2 above but brillant. Cupide de lock is on of the best songs of all time.

4. Machina definitly the most flawed and frustrating but the album really is unlike any other album on the planet. It creates it's own world and has some of the best songs they ever wrote and for some reason I rarely get tired of it. The whole is definitly greater than a sum of it's parts.

5. Siamese Dream - musically beautiful and heavy. Dreamlike vocals and classic songs. Doesn't have the musical variety of later albums but has my fav song ever: Hummer!!

6. Machina II - The more dramatic and rocking side of Machina. But the unfinished nature of many of the songs brings it down.

7. Gish - Production robs the rocking songs of their natural power but the slow songs are great. Whole album suffers lyrically due to Corgan's inexperienced writing ability at the time. Better than most bands debuts but still their worst. I hardly ever listen to it. I listen to live versions of these songs usually and they are almost always better.

I'm not counting Pisces or TAFH or Judas O because they aren't real albums.

my 2 cents

1. MCIS- I've been addicted to every song on there at one point or another, and I absolutly love the songs to the singles.
2. Machina II- Dross is one of my favorite songs ever
3. Machina I- It's like Adore without the deep sorrow. So its good!
4. Adore- Probably would be the best album ever created if it was rock-orientated, but its not, but it's still great
5. Siamese Dream- Great, but a little too poppy for my taste. Geek USA and Soma are some of my all-time favs too
Gish- Too dreamy for me
PI- The SD scraps end out the list

dudehitscar link=topic=836.msg12737#msg12737 date=1164941707]
my fav song ever: Hummer!!



where the hell were you back in the day when hummer lost the non-singles battle


IT WOULD HAVE MADE IT TO THE TOP

i swear

It's a pretty touch decision.

1) First place varies between MACHINA and Mellon Collie
2) Adore was my favorite album for a while, but overall it's my second favorite.
3) MACHINA II comes next
4) Siamese Dream
5) Gish
6) Pisces Iscariot

Now I'm thinking we should probably have a ranking of the singles.

lol, already done....let me see if i can find the results

okay, maybe we only did non-singles


where the hell is trizesta

Rivers Cuomo link=topic=836.msg12762#msg12762 date=1164951394]
where the hell is trizesta

yeah we haven't had any of those battles for a while...

dudehitscar link=topic=836.msg12737#msg12737 date=1164941707]

7. Gish - Production robs the rocking songs of their natural power but the slow songs are great. Whole album suffers lyrically due to Corgan's inexperienced writing ability at the time. Better than most bands debuts but still their worst. I hardly ever listen to it. I listen to live versions of these songs usually and they are almost always better.


I'm curious how you formulated this opinion... I'd say this of Machina (Heavy Metal Machine...). The production on Gish tends to be pretty clean (it is Butch Vig, after all), which I think would strengthen a rock song, or at least not weaken it...

If we're ranking them in order then...

1. Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
2. Siamese Dream
3. Gish
4. Machina
5. Machina II
6. Adore
7. Pisces Iscariot

All of their albums are great in their own right.

evando link=topic=836.msg12769#msg12769 date=1164952610]
dudehitscar link=topic=836.msg12737#msg12737 date=1164941707]

7. Gish - Production robs the rocking songs of their natural power but the slow songs are great. Whole album suffers lyrically due to Corgan's inexperienced writing ability at the time. Better than most bands debuts but still their worst. I hardly ever listen to it. I listen to live versions of these songs usually and they are almost always better.


I'm curious how you formulated this opinion... I'd say this of Machina (Heavy Metal Machine...). The production on Gish tends to be pretty clean (it is Butch Vig, after all), which I think would strengthen a rock song, or at least not weaken it...


Yes you could make the same argument for Machina. I would disagree with you but I can see that perspective. The thing with Gish is mainly with the guitars. Especially on Siva they are simply not loud enough and too clean sounding. Corgan's "Yeah!" is just not powerful enough as well. The rock songs lack that extra kick that was displayed on later albums.

Seriously compare www.thepumpkins.net/mp3/mashed_potatoes/...ing_Pumpkins_-_Siva_(live_92).mp3
with the one of the album. It's not even close.

that being said you could probably point to comparisions between Machina and live renditions but really it's not quite the same because Machina songs aren't basic sounding rock songs. Gish was.

Gish is a still a pretty good album. Pumpkins don't have any bad albums.

In some sense it seems like Gish wasn't normalized properly. The levels need to be boosted a little.

Sometimes I am tempted to say Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but I think that feeling is purely based on nostalgia, of that was when I got into the band, and when they were at the height of their popularity.

There is no doubt that Machina could have had some of the noise removed from the mix, but overall its a great record, with as someone pointed out, some of the best songs SP ever wrote.

When I said Pisces Iscariot didn't have a particular vision in mind, I didn't necessarily mean it needed to be a concept album. Gish and Siamese Dream I don't think were aimed at being concept albums. MCIS, Machina and to a lesser extent, Adore were.

I am not trying to knock the songs on Pisces, but think about it this way. What if SP had not had an album until 1994 and decided to throw together random songs that ended up on Gish and Siamese Dream, recorded in those respective time periods. The mind set and mood of the band were undoubtedly different at those times. Since these were already mostly released tracks, mixed together from different sources, the way you look at the album is totally different.

Now its not as drastic as say trying to rate how good the Rotten Apples, the Greatest Hits CD compares to the rest of the album, but I hope you see what I am trying to get at.

A more extreme and more debatable example would be if someone compared a hypothetical SP remix compilation to the rest of the albums. I know it wouldn't be the same, because usually remixes are done by outside sources. Although, comparing Machina 2 to the other albums is somewhat problematic considering there is two versions of Cash Car Star, and alternate versions (early or later versions of songs, remixes in a sense) of songs like Blue Skies Bring Tears, Here's to the Atomb, and Try, Try, Try.

Now I am just overanalyzing everything :P.

Eye link=topic=836.msg12781#msg12781 date=1164964299]
There is no doubt that Machina could have had some of the noise removed from the mix, but overall its a great record, with as someone pointed out, some of the best songs SP ever wrote.

i agree, i think alot of noise couldve been removed. IMO

It's Adore for me. Some of those songs just take me elsewhere: To Sheila, For Martha, Blank Page. I love the groove in Ava Adore & the up-tempo electro feel of Daphne Descends & Appels + Oranjes. That album opened up a lot of doors for me musically

stumbleine link=topic=836.msg12782#msg12782 date=1164965586]
Eye link=topic=836.msg12781#msg12781 date=1164964299]
There is no doubt that Machina could have had some of the noise removed from the mix, but overall its a great record, with as someone pointed out, some of the best songs SP ever wrote.

i agree, i think alot of noise couldve been removed. IMO





I like the noise...It gave the album a different sound than the rest.

I can't belive that noone has voted for gish and that siamese dream is so far down most peoples list. I voted for siamese dream because I'ts my fav but I dont think I could rank the rest, the're all individual unique in their own ways.

two totally different styles of production


gish is mixed in a cool way that (someone said on another thread before) all the instruments really come out and shine, you can hear the bass clearly, and the guitars, and the drums, etc.