Smashing Pumpkins, The | Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness | CD 178

Emotionally over-the-top pop extravaganzas like the string-swelling "Tonight Tonight", the Metallica-influenced alternative rock of "Zero", the techno via new wave of "1979"--the 28 songs on this swell two-disc album are as eclectic as their themes are epic and ambitious. Billy Corgan's thin whine isn't much of an instrument, but he makes the most of it by writing smart songs that take emotional chances that more-typical alt rockers would deem uncool. Pessimistic and feeling trapped but still wanting to believe in love, in a future, in something--this is the sound of Gen X at the millennium, with all the self-indulgence and power that would suggest. --David Cantwell

TRACKLIST

DISC 1

1. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
2. Tonight, Tonight
3. Jellybelly
4. Zero
5. Here Is No Why
6. Bullet With Butterfly Wings
7. To Forgive
8. Fuck You (An Ode to No One)
9. Love
10. Cupid De Locke
11. Galapogos
12. Muzzle
13. Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
14. Take Me Down

DISC 2

1. Where Boys Fear to Tread
2. Bodies
3. Thirty-three
4. In the Arms of Sleep
5. 1979
6. Tales of a Scorched Earth
7. Thru the Eyes of Ruby
8. Stumbleine
9. X.Y.U.
10. We Only Come Out at Night
11. Beautiful
12. Lily (My One and Only)
13. By Starlight
14. Farewell and Goodnight