The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Smashing Pumpkins · produced by Flood, Alan Moulder and Billy Corgan · Virgin · two discs, twenty-eight tracks, about two hours
Mode
Alternative rock taken to the scale of the classic double album: orchestral pop, solo piano, metal, a drum loop, a lullaby and a music-hall song
Mythos
A day as a life, dawn to starlight and waking to sleep; the impossible night, the vampire world, the ocean; evoked as atmosphere
Phase
Two discs; a piano overture into strings, a nine-minute build sinking the first disc, a long night of contrast, and two songs easing the second to sleep
Presentation
Double album; twenty-eight tracks on two discs of fourteen, Dawn to Dusk and Twilight to Starlight, about two hours, three tracks past seven minutes taking about a fifth of the time
Register
A strained, close voice; dense layered guitars, strings on one song, solo piano, a drum loop; drumming that drives and controls the long builds
Scale
One young self in rage and longing, with a family glimpsed, love lost, death as sleep, and stars and oceans as atmosphere
Governing Proposition
At the height of its audience, a band from the alternative scene answers a decade suspicious of excess with a two-hour double album running from dawn to starlight: a record of adolescent rage and longing at full scale, rising often and highest in Tonight, Tonight and Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, exact in 1979, and held below its ambition by its own sprawl, in which a frame the songs sit inside stands in for a form they enact and much could go without loss.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a piano alone. The title piece is a short instrumental, under three minutes of solo piano with nothing of the band in it, and then it gives way to Tonight, Tonight: strings swelling under a snare roll, and a voice straining upward over them. Within its first seven minutes the record makes its claim, which is to grandeur, reached by a rock band and offered without irony. The title itself, a pun on melancholy, says what kind of grandeur it will be: sadness taken at infinite scale.
Virgin released Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on 24 October 1995 as a double album on two compact discs, and it entered the Billboard 200 at number one. It was produced by Flood, Alan Moulder and Billy Corgan. The band were Billy Corgan, on voice, guitar and piano and the writer of most of the songs, James Iha on guitar, D’arcy Wretzky on bass and Jimmy Chamberlin on drums. The first disc is titled Dawn to Dusk and the second Twilight to Starlight; each holds fourteen tracks, twenty-eight in all, in about two hours.
The unit is that release, the two discs in their order. Later reissues and the companion set of B-sides, The Aeroplane Flies High (1996), stand beside it as context. The proportions are those of a record that wants everything at once. Three tracks, Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, Thru the Eyes of Ruby and X.Y.U., run past seven minutes and take about a fifth of the time; five, among them the title piece and Take Me Down, which closes the first disc, run under three. Between them the record moves through orchestral pop, piano pieces, metal, a drum loop, a lullaby and a music-hall song.
Movement II
Bullet with Butterfly Wings states the record’s rage plainly: “despite all my rage”, and then the cage the rage cannot break. It is rage that knows its own impotence, sung by a self too large for its circumstances and unable to change them, and the song knows that about itself. Zero, a few tracks earlier, gives the same self its inverted pride, “emptiness is loneliness”, emptiness worn as a distinction. These are the record’s plainest statements, and they hold: a condition stated, and recognisable.
What the record brings into the open is adolescent and post-adolescent feeling at full scale: the rage, a longing that knows its own self-pity, and the sense of a self that wants more than it is given. Thirty-Three, on the second disc, gives the other face of it, tenderness without bravado. The disclosure is real, and it reaches past the mood band where a condition is stated and holds, in Bullet with Butterfly Wings and in 1979.
Much of it stays mood. The words often name feelings rather than uncover them, and across two hours the record more often renders a state than states a meaning that can be held. Its heavy register returns again and again: Bodies carries it, and so does Bullet with Butterfly Wings, and Tales of a Scorched Earth and X.Y.U. carry it once more without adding to what the first two knew. The sprawl is the record’s claim, and it is also where the subtractive test bites hardest.
Movement III
Porcelina of the Vast Oceans is the first disc’s deep centre, and it earns its nine minutes. It begins on a quiet guitar figure and builds, layer on layer, to an oceanic wall of sound, then recedes. The height is reached over time rather than by a hook, and the drumming carries the build: Chamberlin’s control of its long rise is the surest craft on the record. Placed thirteenth, it sinks the first disc before Iha’s Take Me Down closes it gently. Thru the Eyes of Ruby, on the second disc, gives the same kind of long, layered ascent.
The frame around it is announced: a day from dawn to dusk and from twilight to starlight, a day as a life, waking to sleep, with the packaging’s Victorian dream imagery of a girl among stars. Tonight, Tonight carries the myth of the impossible night, “time is never time”. Corgan’s figures, the vampire world, the infinite night, the ocean of Porcelina, are deep patterns, and the record summons them as atmosphere.
The frame is one the songs sit inside, not a structure they enact. Few of them turn on where they stand in the cycle, and many could move from one disc to the other with little change to their sense. Inside each disc the order is largely a programme of contrast, loud then soft then loud, rather than an argument. The halves give the length a direction and the ends are placed with care; between the ends, the form is a container that suits the content more than an instrument that produces it.
Movement IV
1979 is the record’s most exact disclosure. A suburban night, the young drifting between boredom and a future they cannot see: the song gives it as much by the lift of its drum loop and guitar as by its words, and the sound is credited as fully as the words. It is also a small masterpiece of arrangement, loop, bass, voice and treated guitar in exact balance, and the record’s one clear turn inside the band’s own language, toward a drum loop and soft synthesis. Its height is smaller than Tonight, Tonight’s, and it aches.
The making around it is high and uneven. Flood and Alan Moulder give the heavy songs a dense, layered weight that stays legible and the soft songs a close, warm room, and the strings of Tonight, Tonight are arranged with real skill by a rock record’s standards. Corgan’s voice is the limited instrument, strained or nasal by design and sometimes by limit; the louder tracks of the second disc are loud more than shaped; the novelty and filler are made with less care. The command is accomplished, not load-bearing throughout.
The swerve was from its own decade. The alternative rock of the moment had defined itself against excess, and a band at the height of its audience answered with two hours of it. The form it turned toward was inherited, the double album as total statement, the path of the White Album, Physical Graffiti, The Wall and London Calling. The record proved that an alternative band could carry that form to a mass audience in the 1990s, and it shaped the grandiose arena rock of the decade after. Its own formal moves, 1979 and the orchestral anthem of Tonight, Tonight, are local.
Movement V
The record ends in a lullaby. By Starlight and Farewell and Goodnight ease the second disc to sleep, a hushed and warm descent after two hours of swings between tenderness and rage. The close answers the opening piano and completes the frame: dawn to starlight, the young sent to sleep. It is the record’s one law made audible, a temperament swinging between extremes and a day descending toward its end, and the best of the range holds under it, Tonight, Tonight and Bodies belonging to one self.
The law does not hold everywhere. Lily (My One and Only), a music-hall novelty, We Only Come Out at Night and Cupid de Locke break into pastiche, and Iha’s two songs, sweet and modest, sit outside the physics. The record holds the young self in rage and longing, the family in glimpses, love and its loss, death faced as sleep, and a register of stars and oceans; labour, the state and history barely enter, and the stars are atmosphere rather than an order held in structure. Its band’s previous record, Siamese Dream, at 8.4 on this desk, holds its law in about an hour.
Thirty-one years have tested it. The recording survives whole and continuously in print; 1979, Tonight, Tonight and Bullet with Butterfly Wings remain in circulation, and the album is among the most heard double albums of its decade. Listeners who first heard it young return and find it holds, above all in its sound. Its surface is partly fixed to the middle of the 1990s, in the wall of guitar and the adolescent register of some words. It stands in Tier III because its parts are not all required and its law does not hold across its width: a record that wanted everything at once, and kept much of what it took.
Act III · The Twelve
Twenty-eight tracks in about two hours, and the record’s own scale invites the subtractive test. Some of the length is compelled: the day and night frame wants a long arc, the piano piece that opens and the lullaby that closes are required as its two ends, and Porcelina of the Vast Oceans earns its nine minutes as the first disc’s deep centre. Much else could go. Cupid de Locke restates the mood of the title piece; Lily (My One and Only), a music-hall novelty, dents the night side; We Only Come Out at Night and Beautiful are slight; Tales of a Scorched Earth and X.Y.U. repeat the heavy register Bodies and Bullet with Butterfly Wings already carry. A single disc of the strongest fifteen would lose little of what the work knows, and that holds the figure lowest.
Score: 7.0 / 10
What is brought into the open is adolescent and post-adolescent feeling at full scale: rage that knows its impotence, longing that knows its self-pity, a self too large for its circumstances. Bullet with Butterfly Wings states the first plainly, “despite all my rage”, and names its cage. Zero gives the inverted pride of emptiness, “emptiness is loneliness”. 1979 is the most exact disclosure, a suburban night and the young drifting between boredom and a future they cannot see, rendered by the lift of the drum loop and guitar as much as by words, and credited as sound. Thirty-Three gives tenderness without bravado. What holds it: much of the disclosure is of mood more than of a meaning that can be stated and held, and the words often name feelings rather than uncover them.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation is the record’s strength, and it comes often. Tonight, Tonight is the summit: strings swell under a snare roll and a voice that strains upward, grandeur reached by a rock band with no irony. Porcelina of the Vast Oceans builds from a quiet guitar figure to an oceanic wall and recedes, height reached over time rather than by a hook. Thru the Eyes of Ruby gives a long, layered ascent; 1979 a smaller, aching height; By Starlight and Farewell and Goodnight a hushed, warm descent. The dreadful register is present in Bodies and the opening of Where Boys Fear to Tread. Held short of the top: many tracks between are force without elevation, and the strain in the voice sometimes thins the reach.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The archetypal frame is announced: one cycle from dawn to dusk and twilight to starlight, a day as a life, waking to sleep, with the packaging’s Victorian dream imagery of a girl among stars. Tonight, Tonight carries the myth of the impossible night, “time is never time”, and the record ends in a lullaby, the young sent to sleep. Corgan’s figures, the vampire world, the infinite night, the ocean of Porcelina, are deep patterns summoned as atmosphere. What holds the axis is construction: the day and night order is a frame the songs sit inside, not a structure they enact; few songs turn on where they stand in the cycle, and many could move between discs with little change to their sense.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The departure is from the alternative rock of its moment, which was defined against excess: short records, dry sound, suspicion of ambition. A band at the height of its audience answered with a two-hour double album of orchestral pop, piano pieces, metal, a drum loop, a lullaby and a novelty song, and the stake was real for a band whose previous record had made it. 1979’s turn to a drum loop and soft synthesis is a smaller, genuine move inside the band’s own language. What holds the figure: the form it turns toward is inherited, the double album as total statement of the White Album, Physical Graffiti, The Wall and London Calling, so the swerve is against its decade more than against the tradition.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Change the form and part of what the record knows goes. The double-album scale is the claim: the record knows a self that wants everything at once, and an edited single disc would know a more composed and less overwhelmed self. The sequence is counted here, once. The day and night halves give the length a direction, and the placing has good moments: the piano overture straight into Tonight, Tonight; Porcelina set to sink the first disc before Take Me Down closes it; By Starlight and Farewell and Goodnight easing the second to sleep. Held short: inside each disc the order is largely a programme of contrast, loud, soft, loud, rather than an argument, and many songs would mean the same in another place. The form suits the content more than it produces it.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Evidence over thirty-one years. The record is returned to by listeners who first heard it young and find that it holds, and critical writing has renewed on it at its anniversaries and reissues. What yields on return is formal more than semantic: the layering of guitars on Porcelina of the Vast Oceans and Thru the Eyes of Ruby, the arrangement of Tonight, Tonight, the drum programming and bass line of 1979, Jimmy Chamberlin’s playing throughout. The words give less; their meanings lie mostly on the surface. Repeated listening tends to sort the songs into the essential and the dispensable rather than to deepen the whole, and the record has not sustained the kind of re-examination that turns up new readings of its sense.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is the rock album of the 1990s, after the alternative scene had defined itself against scale. The intrinsic force is moderate: the record does not reorganise what rock could do, but gathers what the band and the classic double album could already do and makes it larger. Its real formal moves, the loop-based soft rock of 1979 and the orchestral alternative anthem of Tonight, Tonight, are local. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it proved that an alternative band could carry a two-hour double album to a mass audience in the 1990s, and it shaped the grandiose, emotive arena rock of the decade that followed, though the particular later records it redirected cannot be named with confidence. Its reach is that of a period-defining record, not a field-moving one.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirty-one years, on form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as released and has been continuously in print, played and reissued, the reissues standing beside it. Presence is wide: 1979, Tonight, Tonight and Bullet with Butterfly Wings remain in continuous circulation, and the album is among the most heard double albums of its decade. The charge is the fabric: the surface is partly fixed to its moment, in the production’s mid-decade wall of guitar and in the adolescent register of some of the words, which date more than the record’s best music does. The width of presence lifts the figure; the period surface holds it where it stands.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, is high and uneven. Flood and Alan Moulder give the heavy songs a dense, layered weight that stays legible, and the soft songs a close, warm room. Chamberlin’s drumming is the surest craft: the propulsion of Tonight, Tonight and the control of Porcelina’s long build. The string arrangement of Tonight, Tonight is handled with real skill by a rock record’s standards, and 1979 is a small masterpiece of arrangement, loop, bass, voice and treated guitar in exact balance. Against that: the voice is a limited instrument, strained or nasal by design but sometimes by limit; Tales of a Scorched Earth and X.Y.U. are loud more than shaped; the novelty and filler tracks are made with less care. Accomplished command, not load-bearing throughout.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the solo piano of the opening piece and the screaming of Tales of a Scorched Earth, or the music-hall bounce of Lily and the drone of X.Y.U. They obey one law in part. The governing physics is Corgan’s emotional extremity, a self that swings between tenderness and rage, and the day-to-night frame adds a law of descent toward sleep. The best of the range holds under it: Tonight, Tonight and Bodies belong to one temperament. What holds the figure: some of the range is variety for its own sake. Lily, We Only Come Out at Night and Cupid de Locke break the physics into pastiche, and James Iha’s two songs, sweet and modest, sit outside it. The width is credited; the law does not hold everywhere across it.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Judged on what the record holds. Two hours give room, and it holds more than one consciousness: the solitary young self in rage and longing, which is its ground; the family in glimpses, as in the domestic tenderness of Thirty-Three; love and its loss; death faced as sleep; and a cosmic register of stars and oceans. These are present more than integrated. Labour, the state, history and the social world beyond the self barely enter, and the cosmic register is atmosphere rather than an order of reality held in structure. The long form allows more than this record achieves, though it reaches further than most single albums of its kind. That is what holds the figure lowest, level with The Inevitable.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.6, then The Sublime at 8.4 and The Made at 8.3. A recording whole and continuously in print after thirty-one years, three of its songs in continuous circulation and the album among the most heard double albums of its decade; elevation that comes often, highest in Tonight, Tonight and Porcelina of the Vast Oceans; and a making whose drumming, layered production and arrangement of 1979 carry the record where the voice and the louder tracks do not.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable and The Encompassed at 7.0: twenty-eight tracks of which a single disc of the strongest fifteen would keep nearly all the record knows, with Cupid de Locke, Lily and a second heavy register that could go without loss; and a young self in rage and longing at the centre, the family glimpsed, the cosmic register atmosphere, and labour, the state and history barely present. Then The Inner Law at 7.5, a temperament that governs the best of the range and breaks into pastiche at its edges.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.0 falls five tenths short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.7, The Made at 8.3, The Inner Law at 7.5, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 7.8, The Archetypal Deep at 7.7, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.6 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Inevitable, 7.0, below 7.5; The Inner Law meets it exactly at 7.5, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Two of the five summit conditions are met, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, from a sum of 92.8, in the band of Tier III, three tenths short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and well short of the 9.0 that the summit requires, and the Necessity Cap would close the summit to it at any aggregate.
Basis · the double album as first released by Virgin on 24 October 1995 on two compact discs, Dawn to Dusk and Twilight to Starlight, fourteen tracks each in their original order, about two hours; produced by Flood, Alan Moulder and Billy Corgan; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. The compact disc release is the unit; the vinyl issue, the reissues and the companion set of B-sides, The Aeroplane Flies High (1996), are context. Songs are cited by title, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the running order and contents of the vinyl issue, who played the strings on Tonight, Tonight, which songs were released as singles, the album’s certifications and awards, the record company’s view of the double format, how Farewell and Goodnight is sung, and which lyrics touch on a parent, are not given.