Adore slides between levels of melancholia with an almost depressive carelessness, which isn’t to say the entire album is 16 shades of grey – because there are moments of sunshine amid the clouds – but as I played the songs in order, I felt my mood constantly shifting to suit it.
The acoustic opening track ‘To Sheila’ is gentle and cosy, giving the feel of a song sung over a campfire with the soft sound of cicadas in the background and Corgan’s signature husky vocals. So when the chunky electro-pop beat of ‘Ava Adore’ hits me, it’s almost a shock! But a welcome one all the same. The guitars, as you know by now, are my favourite part of this track, creating a beautifully rich backdrop for the chorus, Corgan’s vocals rising to an equally unique nasal cry as he declares ‘we must never be apart.’ From here, things take a slow dive into the depths of sadness from the dreamy and up-tempo ‘Perfect’, the airy yet melancholic vibrations of ‘Daphne Descends’ and the gently captivating ‘Once Upon a Time’, to the subtly dramatic tragedy of ‘Tear’ with its soaring string choir, and the muted electro despair of ‘Crestfallen’. But then, just when you feel you’ve given up, from out of the darkness comes light. ‘Appels + Oranjes’ is an up-beat, mid-tempo electro pop tune, much smoother than ‘Ava Adore’ with tight metallic guitar notes. These notes are echoed in ‘Pug’ while being backed up by some hefty bass which periodically drops in and out for a cosy tonal shift, making this my favourite song on the whole album. Finally comes ‘The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete’, a gently smiling tambourine-infused tune, before everything takes a second dive for the last 6 songs.
‘Annie-Dog’ is another of my favourites because, aside from being a simple little piano-
backed refrain, Corgan maintains a steady, almost rusty croon, that’s equal parts soothing and alluring. And somehow this carries into ‘Shame’ (a newly admired song for me) where I found something almost comforting in his repetition of ‘sh-sh-sh-sh-shame’. But this track is also very cymbal heavy and draws out its guitar notes just as Corgan allows his voice to rise harshly once more. For ‘Behold! The Night Mare’, there is a return to the dreaminess of ‘Perfect’, albeit with a more psychedelic edge and a discordant guitar interlude that lends it a nightmarish twist. The elegiac ‘For Martha’, written following the passing of Corgan’s mother from cancer, is a suitably sad 8 minutes of gentle piano, instrumentation, and vocals, bisected by a strong guitar solo. But ‘Blank Page’ is a final return to melancholia, backed by a simple piano tune (which almost reminds of My Chemical Romance’s ‘I Don’t Love You’ if it were acoustic) and laced with some sad synth sounds and Corgan’s poignantly slow lyrics. I could almost accept this as the end of the album if not for the 17 seconds of wavering, dissonant piano notes which make up ‘17’. I think this is yet another album, like Korn’s ‘The Nothing’ that I have come to appreciate so much more for paying closer attention – putting aside the fact that it’s the perfect fuel for depression. I will just continue to ride this psychedelic cloud of comfort in the hope of better days.
Corgan Photo courtesy of: Graham Racher, CC BY-SA 2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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