Atum by the Smashing Pumpkins

Of The Aggie

I tried listening to ATUM several times and got through disc one and then gave up. I never liked Shiny but I absolutely love CYR. I do wish they'd get back to more guitar-oriented stuff. They've been such an uneven band. 

Eraserhead

Got my grubby mits on this today and played disc 1 so far. I like what I hear apart from the last-but-one track. Looking forward to playing this a few more times before moving on to the rest of it.

lolobugg

I listened to the whole thing in one day. I need to go back to listen again. so much to take in. 

mickeyrat

I did my part to make sure there was at least one copy available.....

you're welcome.

HughFreakingDillon

a guy on the fan group on FB sent me the bonus tracks. I've listened twice, and blech. 

RoeDawg13

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

I suppose that's a way to look at it. I still like to do the full albums when I can and it's a little bloated that way.

HughFreakingDillon

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

interesting, as that's a complete 180 from the Teargarden project idea. Which I preferred. 

DarthMaeglin

RoeDawg13 said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

I suppose that's a way to look at it. I still like to do the full albums when I can and it's a little bloated that way.

I’m with you on tending to listen to full albums and after two listens to ATUM I agree that it feels a bit bloated, though I can only think of one or two songs that were duds to me (though I think they still fit in terms of the full work).

HughFreakingDillon said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

interesting, as that's a complete 180 from the Teargarden project idea. Which I preferred. 

Another thing that came across in the podcasts was how he’s mellowed in regards to the different types of fans are out there (even the “siamese zombies”, lol). Thus he gets that some fans just want the rock Pumpkins and not everyone’s up for all the ups and downs of the full Pumpkins experience, lol.

One thing that’s struck me about ATUM, when looking at it as a concept album, is the lack of recurring musical motifs (a la Floyd’s The Wall), at least to my untrained ears. I’m probably wrong (again, untrained ears and being too lazy to actually confirm my theory, lol) but it seemed to me that was something that was present on CYR and I thought it helped tie that album together.

My only other possible beef with ATUM so far is the lack of full lyrics in the liner notes, though these days that’s less of an issue since they can surely be found online, lol.

lolobugg

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

I suppose that's a way to look at it. I still like to do the full albums when I can and it's a little bloated that way.

I’m with you on tending to listen to full albums and after two listens to ATUM I agree that it feels a bit bloated, though I can only think of one or two songs that were duds to me (though I think they still fit in terms of the full work).

HughFreakingDillon said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

interesting, as that's a complete 180 from the Teargarden project idea. Which I preferred. 

Another thing that came across in the podcasts was how he’s mellowed in regards to the different types of fans are out there (even the “siamese zombies”, lol). Thus he gets that some fans just want the rock Pumpkins and not everyone’s up for all the ups and downs of the full Pumpkins experience, lol.

One thing that’s struck me about ATUM, when looking at it as a concept album, is the lack of recurring musical motifs (a la Floyd’s The Wall), at least to my untrained ears. I’m probably wrong (again, untrained ears and being too lazy to actually confirm my theory, lol) but it seemed to me that was something that was present on CYR and I thought it helped tie that album together.

My only other possible beef with ATUM so far is the lack of full lyrics in the liner notes, though these days that’s less of an issue since they can surely be found online, lol.

the boxset came with a lyric book with explanations for the songs and how they fit the story of Shiny. was this not included in the regular 4 disc set?

DarthMaeglin

lolobugg said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

I suppose that's a way to look at it. I still like to do the full albums when I can and it's a little bloated that way.

I’m with you on tending to listen to full albums and after two listens to ATUM I agree that it feels a bit bloated, though I can only think of one or two songs that were duds to me (though I think they still fit in terms of the full work).

HughFreakingDillon said:

DarthMaeglin said:

RoeDawg13 said:

We All Believe said:

I hate it. It's hot synthesized garbage, on top of the hot synthesized garbage that was CYR.

There are maybe 4 or 5 of the 33 songs that are worth it, IMO.

I love the Pumpkins. They are my second favorite band after PJ, and their music will always be part of the soundtrack of my life.

That being said, for him to call this a sequel to MCIS is a spectacular insult to MCIS, which is top-to-bottom perfect, and a lesser insult to Machina, but still an insult nonetheless.

Barely any guitars. He's so underrated as a guitarist that he might actually be overrated.

And he's got the best drummer this side of Bonzo and Keith Moon at his disposal, in Jimmy Chamberlin, and JC is largely on the sidelines, except for Intergalactic.

His singing style has also changed for the worse. I know he said he had to change because his old style was killing his voice, but it's tough to make out most of what he's saying on Atum, between his enunciation and the fact that his vocals are fairly low in the mix.

I get that bands need to evolve and shake it up once in a while. But Shiny Vol 1 was pretty good, IMO. CYR might have been semi-tolerable if it was a one-off. But this is a horrible new direction. He's said recently that the new stuff will be more guitar-driven. We'll see.

That's another thing. 53 songs in 3 years, 63 including the ATUM extras. And another new album on the way. And the Zwan extras. And the Machina reissues. Plus the NWA. Plus Madame Zuzu's. Plus two young kids. He needs to chill out and relax lolol.

Shiny 1 and Atum have a good number of tracks that are pretty decent. I am definitely interested in hearing the box exclusives since I've seen comparisons to the acoustic side of Zwan. Cyr wasn't for me at all though. For the latest project, I think if the took the best parts of songs and put them together to make a more condensed album that might help. Or perhaps just focusing on 10 instead of 40. The vocals buried in the mix under layers and layers of guitars was always a draw for me and I even liked the more poppy 1979 or electronic experimentation on Eye. It doesn't have to be a complete rock album for me to enjoy it but a lot of the output just isn't my cup of tea. And agree about Jimmy... he's such a fantastic drummer and being completely underutilized.

At one point in the podcasts Billy mentioned that one of the intentions(?) of including so much material was that in this day and age of playlists if one is fan of a particular version of the band they can probably find 10 or so songs that would fit their bill (and thus give them an album’s worth of songs). A different version of throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, lol?

interesting, as that's a complete 180 from the Teargarden project idea. Which I preferred. 

Another thing that came across in the podcasts was how he’s mellowed in regards to the different types of fans are out there (even the “siamese zombies”, lol). Thus he gets that some fans just want the rock Pumpkins and not everyone’s up for all the ups and downs of the full Pumpkins experience, lol.

One thing that’s struck me about ATUM, when looking at it as a concept album, is the lack of recurring musical motifs (a la Floyd’s The Wall), at least to my untrained ears. I’m probably wrong (again, untrained ears and being too lazy to actually confirm my theory, lol) but it seemed to me that was something that was present on CYR and I thought it helped tie that album together.

My only other possible beef with ATUM so far is the lack of full lyrics in the liner notes, though these days that’s less of an issue since they can surely be found online, lol.

the boxset came with a lyric book with explanations for the songs and how they fit the story of Shiny. was this not included in the regular 4 disc set?

I only bought the lowly(lol) cd version which has brief descriptions of what’s happening story-wise but no lyrics. #firstworldproblems lol