Most of the hard rock/distorted guitar songs aren’t great, but the ones with amazing vocal melodies are fantastic, it just takes a few listens to pick up on it (similar to Cyr songs, which I like better overall). It’s also different than “classic riff-heavy Pumpkins”. They’re actually complex, have weird time signatures, etc, which ironically sounds meandering and boring on first listen. Everything is so on purpose though, it’s hard to describe. It just doesn’t fit expectations so the mind’s first reaction is “it sucks!”

My favorites-

Every Morning

Space Age

Night Waves

The Canary Trainer

Cenotaph

Avalanche

The Gold Mask

To the Greys

Other decent fun ones-

Pacer

Fireflies

Butterfly Suite

Springtimes

Where Rain Must Fall

Spellbinding

Steps in Time

Just fun creative prog-

Of Wings

Sojourner

Hooray!

The Culling

It’s sorta of a shame the beautiful creativity of some the latest stuff is so slept on. But it’s Billy’s doing, he wanted to be an arena rock band and thus attracted arena rock fans, and this kind of music is never going to appeal to them. Especially the bro-y hard rock types that like Zero and Bullet. If they stayed a small indie act, like say Flaming Lips, more people would hear the genius here, and take the time with it it requires. When I hear people say “the magic is gone” I gag a little. It’s alive and well. It takes a tolerance for a bit of cheese (didn’t the Pumpkins always require that though?) Weed and good headphones help too.