ok, ok, ok, rob settle down!!!!! sorry, i know many of u hate zwan but here are my thoughts. just heard "el sol", THIS WHOLE ALBUM SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE THE PUMPKINS, which further proves billy is the genius behind the worlds greatest band. very machina 2.
what a great record, it was so needed after the breakup, man this is MACHINA 3!!!
sorry, i know many of u hate zwan but here are my thoughts.

ps. am i late???????hahaha

I honestly (no pun intended) don't see the connection between Mary Star of the Sea and Machina II. Whether people liked Zwan or not depends on the person, but Zwan involved a conscious effort by Billy and Jimmy NOT to sound like the Pumpkins. In that respect, Mary Star of the Sea is a very anti-SP record. Just as Let it Come Down was James trying to make a record that did not sound like the Pumpkins.

MACHINA 3???

Sorry bro but I'm with EYE on this one.

i'm also with EYE and DAN on this one.

ZWAN was different, billy wanted something really different (well, at least he tried to create something else) and the whole record is more pop than SP.

of course some seconds could sound a little bit like SP-songs and billy's voice of course is the same but no way... for me ZWAN has also been just an experiment. I knew he'd quit that band after 1 or 2 records.

I think if you didn't know anything about either band and you were just listening to an ipod on random that had SP and Zwan songs mixed in you wouldn't even question whether there were 2 different band or not....but to anybody who knows anything about the styles and the history, the Zwan ablum is very non-pumpkins. It's decent music, but it's not SP.

I thought they were great. Some of their stuff was damn good, and I can see a logical progression from Pumpkins to Zwan. Songs like Settle Down, Honestly, MSOTS are very Pumpkinish and are reminiscent of Untitled and Real Love. To me, in some ways, it felt like the Pumpkins were headed in this direction anyway, so it’s a logical extension of Billy music.

The lyrical content of Zwan (MSOTS) is what stuck out like a sore thumb. El Sol, Baby, Let’s Rock!, Yeah!, Desire, Come with Me...I mean come on, some of those are laughable at best...not to mention the album art. As for Zwan's non album songs (including Spun), those are boarding on genius. Sometimes I think Billy wanted Zwan to fail, so he sheltered the goods and put the scraps on MSOTS hoping for a one and done sort of thing.

...oh yeah, and Ride a Black Swan sounds like it could have been on Zeitgeist...but I sort of like that song.

Zwan>Zeitgeist

PistolPete wrote:
Sometimes I think Billy wanted Zwan to fail

You're not too far from the truth on that one. In my interview with Billy, he said of Zwan (I'm paraphrasing here):

"You know how you stay in a relationship when you know it's not going anywhere, but it's really fun? That's why Zwan existed."

That might be why Zwan's lyrics seemed, well, trite compared to Billy's more poetic side in earlier Pumpkins songs. Zwan was meant to be lighthearted and noncommittal.

I miss them, frankly. Some of the songs were phenomenal (MSOTS, The Empty Sea, the dual soloing of Billy and Matt Sweeney on "Settle Down" and that record always makes me smile! In total, I've seen Zwan more in concert than SP (6 times to 4 times.)

Lyric and Honestly are FAB songs.

I seriously can't believe you said that its like Machina III, it sounds NOTHING like Machina... Machina is more.. um.. Machine-like.

Yeah with lyrics like "butter my toast", it's not exactly Pumpkins. I don't really see "Honestly" as Pumpkins-like, although there is part of the bridge for "Tarantula" that sounds sort of like part of "Honestly". "Mary Star of the Sea", the song is probably the closest thing to Pumpkins that Zwan ever did.

The differences between SP and Zwan are also evident when listening to the unreleased stuff, like "What Have they Done to Me Now?"

I did like some Zwan songs too. I really wish they would have released a studio version of "A Certain Kind of Change", which was actually only played twice. It was my favorite Zwan song. For some reason SPFC has had it listed under Billy solo for awhile now, when he never played it except with Zwan as far as I know.

I prefer Zeitgeist, despite some of it's problems, to Mary Star of the Sea as an album.

Well, exactly. That's probably Billy's most cringe-worthy lyric ever written.

Do you think, that if you had Adore's lyrics on Zwan's album, you'd have an AMAZING album?

Geek N.Z. wrote:
Lyric and Honestly are FAB songs.

I seriously can't believe you said that its like Machina III, it sounds NOTHING like Machina... Machina is more.. um.. Machine-like.
i said machine 2. and might i add very much like "home".

zwan and mary star of the sea remind of a child's birthday party everybodies HAPPY cause there getting cake its nothing like the pumpkins in my mind, the pumpkins music takes me on a musical journey zwan made me want to acheive world peace.

Zwan makes me want to eat buttered toast.

corganvision wrote:
zwan and mary star of the sea remind of a child's birthday party everybodies HAPPY cause there getting cake its nothing like the pumpkins in my mind, the pumpkins music takes me on a musical journey zwan made me want to acheive world peace.

I love it! Zwan was so full of rainbows and ponies.

Did anyone ever notice, that Billy took out the best Zwan songs? (I mean, off the album)?
Songs like "Freedom ain't what it used to be" "El-A-Noy" and "How things are" were the best he put out in that perios...but not on the album...Why???
It would have been better to take out fillers like "Heartsong"!