The Smashing Pumpkins

Cyr SUMERIAN

Billy Corgan’s trademark sharp melodies fly on upbeat synth-pop.

With Billy Corgan having overseen numerous works of myth-laden grunge rock and spent much of the past decade releasing chunks and snippets of an unfinished 44-song concept album called Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, based on tarot, it’s not surprising that his quasi-reunion of the original Smashing Pumpkins line-up is turning out to be anything but straightforward. For a start, while guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin are back on board, bassist D’arcy Wretzky has claimed she was excluded from sessions, in interviews detailing the unbearable stresses of being in the band in the 90s. And the traditional comeback nostalgia tour – the Pumpkins’ will be themed around their Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness commercial peak – will have to wait until the release of a 33-track concept album sequel to Melon Collie and 2000’s Machina/The Machines Of God, due in 2021.

In the meantime, the band consolidated their reconnection with the brisk grungepop throwback album in 2018, and continue that multi-part project with , their eleventh album, which, rather than or t, invents what we’ll call ‘mythnopop’.