Smashing Pumpkins, "SuperChrist"

The blogosphere may be pushing this new Pumpkins track down your throat like it's the best thing to drop from Corgans guitar and Chamberlain's drums since Mellon Collie, but it's still missing something.

You want to buy into the heavy guitar riffs, Chamberlain's thundering drums and the all-so welcome violin interlude, but somehow the song just never moves past the sonic insanity into coherency. It starts strong, but for some strange reason stays in 1st gear without shifting up to 5th, or even 3rd.

Ultimately the song reacts the same to this treatment as my aging 1993 Ford Escort, it screams loudly, threatens to blow up, and finally grinds to a stop. It's got so much potential, unlike most of Zeitgeist, but Corgan just can't turn it all the way on.

Turning up the volume just isn't the same.

British Sea Power, "Waving Flags."

http://www.patrolmag.com/index.php?id=296
I had a huge bitter entry written last night about "Things I Don't Know," (Wolf Parade) but then God decided it was better I didn't publish my vitriolic prose and killed the internets.

Let's try a short little ditty to a song that you've probably already heard of, from a band you've probably been listening to longer than me.

Waving Flags is one of those incongrous monumentally epic songs that just doesn't say what you think it should. Shackling itself to lyrics hardly deserving of the riffs which soar on top of the wave of sound created by the swirling guitars, Waving Flags creates a mood that's better left unexamined.

Maybe the guys just have an incredible sense of self-deprecating humor, but when they drop lines like,

Beer is not death/Beer is not life/ It just tastes good/Especially tonight

You can't help but smile.

But if you smile too much, you might miss the real point of the song, that life, it's all a joke and that we're only here for a little while, waving our flags in the sky until we sleep in the dirt.

The abyss staring message may not accurate, but it's still one of those fist pumping melodies that you always feel like turning up loud after a pint or two.

Take a strong serving of the Arcade Fire's epic sense of tragedy (yes I know BSP has been around before the Fire), a cup of the Verve's depression, and just a pinch of U2 and you might be able to recreate this song. It's not going to change your life, but it just might let you hip sway for a few more minutes.

I've had trouble getting into BSP's latest work, "Do You Like Rock Music?" because it seems like there's less rock music inside the track listing and more wandering directionless grandiose melodramatic sound. "Waving Flags" may be just the, "in" I've been looking for.

Might have to catch these guys at the Cat in May.