The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [Deluxe Edition]
As is fitting for one of the most ambitious and indulgent commercial rock records of the 1990s, this extravagant reissue takes Mellon Collie's greatness as given and adopts a warts-and-all approach for the bonus tracks, placing instrumental drum-machine jams and scrappy alt-takes side-to-side with previously unheard curios and cleaned-up demos. The presence of slightly tweaked versions of tracks from The Aeroplane Flies High boxset (itself soon to be reissued) and a couple of cuts from James Iha's first solo album confirm that whilst the Pumpkins' vaults are deep, they're not that deep.
Indeed, the bonus discs feel more like an exhaustive period-archive than anything else, and whilst there are a few real gems here (the Lily demo is wonderful and Fun Time sounds curiously like a languid instrumental outtake from Blur's Modern Life is Rubbish), there's a fair whack of tracks that will only be of real interest to obsessives.
Thankfully the album proper is in fine fettle: the remaster is a little louder; a little brighter, with some of the wooly low end on tracks like Ode to No One having been tightened up nicely. The limitations of the original mix (specifically lack of separation between instruments and some muffled drum takes) remain but the main point to make is that the use of compression doesn't render the music fatiguing to the ears – which given Mellon Collie's length was always going to be the worst-case scenario.
The album itself still delivers thrills and chills in equal measure and serves as a showcase for the Pumpkins' incredible versatility – from the heart-rending shimmer of To Forgive to the pure animal aggression of X.Y.U, the band cover an incredible amount of ground and never sound less than bullishly confident. More than anything else Mellon Collie feels like Corgan's attempt to put clear distance between himself and his alt-rock peers of the period, and with tracks like Tonight, Tonight, 1979 and Thru the Eyes of Ruby he succeeds in dazzling fashion.
Corgan's lyrics have taken some flack over the years, but to these ears they stand up surprisingly well, more often than not coming off like a knowingly theatrical dramatisation of the trials of youth ("No one will come to save you / So speak your peace in the murmurs drawn / But youth is wasted on the young" - Ruby) rather than the sixth-form angst they're frequently characterised as.
With a DVD of period concert footage, a Mellon Collie decoupage set and a lush book of expanded artwork rounding out the set, it's clear that EMI have pushed the boat out for this reissue – and it comes at a price. Then again, it feels like a perversely Pumpkins-like move to aim the reissue of the band's most commercially successful album so squarely at the hardcore fan.