grow your hair, rip your jeans, stop caring.

It's like the internet never happened when you look at the new smashing pumpkins video.

First of all, they made a video. A real honest to god music video. Not a mini movie with music, not any kind of low-budget-but clever viral, it's one of the old fashioned performance clips where the band lip synch's on a sound stage surrounded by a mildy exciting visual aesthetic and some trippy coloured lights and effects. It has a quintessentially mid 90's, pre internet major label kind of feel, the exact kind they used to make and we used to see on muchmusic, all the time, when we were bored teenagers. here's some backstory:

-Billy Corgan was a cuntface asshole and pretentious blowhard last we really saw of him, and everyone hated him for it.
-he's reformed the pumpkins without james iha or either of the bass players.
-He's releasing 4 different versions of his new album on the same day, each containing exclusive different tracks at 4 DIFFERENT big box stores, which has incensed customers and confirmed that this only slightly above average band was reforming just for the cash, and we should expect even less than we expected from the last pumpkins album.
-zwan really bit.

so no one wants billy to be happy or successful since he seems to hate all of mankind, no one really misses the band, and the whole thing sounds like a very obvious cash in. everyone WANTS to hate this reunion. it's a recipe for disaster but somehow awesome delicious came out instead.

the new song is FAN TASTIC. like, one of the best they're ever done. it's so catchy and invigorating. it's like the new feist album that is selling so well at starbucks these days but is just too good to deny. like, what are you going to do with songs these good? NOT like them? and also the video is awesome. they have a cute girl bass player like it isn't a cynical market driven cliche these days. the attitude is straight of the mid 90's too. they rock without the ugly ambition and flailing desperation of todays emo princess' and without the detached irony of the post punk set. 2:34 seconds in there is the first awesome and efficient guitar solo, and he pumps his fist sincerely at the camera. At this moment I forgive all of billy's sins. of the hubris, of the pomposity, of the undeniable selfishness in everything he does, so long as the rest of the album has songs that are that good.

it's SO fucking catchy

-update: turns out the other people in the video are fans who made their own greenscreen versions at the bands behest, online. this makes the whole thing totally post internet and bad. it's still a great song though. stupid fucking greenscreen contests...fucking decemberists...double fucking css...out of touch jerkface control freak pumpkins...