As a thank you to those who participated in the year polls I have decided to write a little bit on the albums which got most of your votes. I'll start with the last closed poll on 1995 and I will try to slowly work my way back to the first poll covering 1972.

In 1995 I already had given up on the Smashing Pumpkins as their second much-hyped sticky over-produced MOR album Siamese Dream was such a letdown after the wonderfully rough and dynamic Gish. I taped the best songs of Mellon Collie... from a friend on a C90 and I was pleasantly surprised of what I heard. Especially as I had been extremely sceptical about a double album which seemed like a manifestation of the huge ego of Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan.

Of course not every minute of these two hours of heavy 90's prog-rock is great. But there are many moments of brilliancy where Corgan's often unnerving shrieking nasal voice doesn't bother me. As the music occasionally is so intense that I don't perceive his self-indulgence. Like e.g. in Love which is a glistening psych mess with hard knocking beats. I can also savour the instrumental(!) title track which opens the album. A solemn piano ballad with some cheesy synthesizer strings on top of it which gives me this kind of Weltschmerz feeling. It segues into Tonight, Tonight like a soundtrack for a glorious western. But when Corgan starts to sing in his false falsetto I have to fast forward.

The pastoral songs are the ones which I can appreciate most. Galapagos is one of them. Corgan abstains from screaming most of the time and that is a benefit on its own. Or the shining guitar pop hymn of 1979. Thru the Eyes of Ruby starts out very promisingly with a yearning vocal delivery in the first two lines but loses me in the middle when things get loaded. The slow and moving By Starlight where Corgan has found his voice would have been the perfect closer. Of course there are also some great hard-rock songs I dig like Where Boys Fear to Tread with the infectious bass guitar riff.

On the whole this weighty multi-faceted double album would have been much more digestible if it had been condensed to one CD with maximal 45 minutes playing time. And would maybe have even been in my top five of 1995.