i love Zeitgeist and its era, but i think there is enough good material from the Teardgarden era and beyond. The production is pretty awful in everything he did until Shiny, but there are at least 10 or 15 songs that are pretty good from all those albums.
I was blown away by the new song, 'Steps in Time'. Synth haters won't be thrilled, but they're interwoven with glorious fuzzy guitars, and a drum beat that wouldn't be out of place on a NIN/Freese collab.
none of these songs really do it for me, they are not bad really but I think it's the production, it's sort of dull and bland, it's missing some sort of spice for me.
Somehow I had never seen this performance before. It definitely wasn't available during the early-mid 00's when I was snatching up every morsel of SP footage I could find on torrent sites. What a setlist!
Disarm
Hello Kitty Kat
Bury Me
Luna
Tristessa
Rocket
Window Paine
Snail
Siva
Drown
I Am One
Offer Up
Silverfuck
Encore:
Hummer
VinylGuy wrote:i havent check it out yet but im exited now!
You missed out on a week's worth of Pumpkins optimism. 'Steps in Time' absolutely slapped, then it was back to reality with 'Where Rain Must Fall', which is a bit of a stinker. And the guest, Adam Lehrer, seems like a total turd! Boo!
just listened to Steps...yeah, its alright im not an instant fan like you. Overall, this release could be strong.
I love the podcast...i dont listen when they talk about the meaning of the new songs, but the guests and specially Billy talking about the old songs are really fun.
The Butch Vig episode was good, it was nice to hear someone else talking about both Gish and SD sessions.
tour stopped here last night. a few months ago live nation did a deal where you could get 4 tix for 80 bucks total and no additional fees for 'select' shows (i.e. shows that were not selling well), so i grabbed those because i didn't think i'd want to pay much more than that. they were nosebleeds, of course, but the xcel is a good arena for concerts even up in the boonies, so it was worth it. i honestly don't recall the last time i paid $20 for a ticket, let alone an arena show for a classic band. i'd never seen jane's addiction before, either, so that was a significant plus in deciding whether to go or not.
poppy opened the show and i actually think she was a pretty good choice and fit for this show. jane's addiction was missing dave navarro due to long covid, so that was disappointing, but troy van leeuwen filled in just fine. they ran through their hits and mostly early stuff, but they definitely felt like they were playing with purpose and i especially enjoyed hearing avery and perkins' rhythms/grooves.
this was my first time seeing iha with the pumpkins since 2000, and it was nice to have him back, and we even got a bit of entertaining billy/james banter. the set was mostly classic hits with only a few of the more recent and newest songs, so the nostalgia fix was good and billy seemed to be more comfortable with this being the case on this tour, referencing the age of the band and how long fans have been coming to the shows. we only come out at night was probably the oddest choice to add for this tour's set, but i still enjoyed hearing it. for the newer stuff i do really like the song cyr and was glad it was a part of this show, and the other newer songs were fine for what they were and at least sounded way better live. i don't think i'd ever heard silverfuck in my 10 or so previous shows, and while it wasn't a classic 20-30 minute rambling freak out, it was a good way to close the show for a fan like me. i do wish i had better seats because the stage setup and lighting looked really good even from up high, but i also don't think i'd have been as happy paying $75-130/ticket for that for this band, either. the band did sound pretty good and there was little bloat compared to any of the previous times i'd seen them even going back to 1998, but there definitely wasn't any adventurousness and looseness (like jane's had earlier)- these smashing pumpkins were definitely more polished/refined in that regard.
