Video Of The Week: The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins' 1998 release, Adore, was the band's ode to dark New Wave music, where electronic beats (and Joey Waronker) took over for departed drummer Jimmy Chamberlin; it was also the last to feature any member of the classic line-up save for leader Billy Corgan, as guitarist James Iha left for A Perfect Circle and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky had just had enough (of everything, Corgan in particular).

A lot of people loved the song Perfect - I didn't, feeling that it was an easier-to-listen-to rehash of 1979 - and almost no one understood the The Cure reference of 17; Ava Adore, however, was liked by almost all fans, in the same vein as Eye from the Lost Highway soundtrack, but more radio-friendly and with its own themes and structure. Its video, directed by Dom & Nic (a.k.a. Nic Goffey and Dominic Hawley), was heavy on the "heroin chic" visual theme, one the Pumpkins had been flirting with since 1995 (Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Zero) but hadn't fully embraced yet:

With Adore considered a flop, Corgan followed it with the extremely hard rocking two-part release Machina: The Machines Of God and Machina II: The Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music, thought at the time to be the band's curtain call.

Video Of The Week: Cults

Cults are really a by-product of their era: at a time where the major labels are near implosion (and pretty much all under the same umbrella corporation) and independent labels are proliferating, you can't tell if an act if indie just by listening to them. You'd think Cults are, by their unpolished sound, yet they're signed with Columbia Records, a division of Sony, who now also owns Epic, BMG, RCA (itself owner of J Records, Arista and Jive), Echo Records, The Michael Jackson Company, and EMI Publishing, among other holdings.

That being said, it doesn't deter from Cults' indie-like, electro-infused darkwave, and neither does the fact that singer Madeline Follin and guitarist/vocalist Brian Oblivion used to be an item; in their case, just like it did for The White Stripes, it actually makes the music better, so far.

The songs off their second record, Static, are simpler than on 2011's self-titled Cults, yet they're also more effective, and perhaps even catchier, as can be attested from this video, High Road:



The imagery at first is a bit reminiscent of The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army, with the close-ups turning into other images, but it quickly becomes its own beast, thanks to fine photo direction and sequences reminiscent of David Lynch (the road) or Donnie Darko (the deer). It's not quite ''experimental'', but like for Nine Inch Nails' Came Back Haunted, if it can manage to turn just a few innocent souls towards proper art, we'll all have won in the end.