Smashing Pumpkins: Artificial amphibians with a dictionary of synonyms

Everything about the Smashing Pumpkins’ music wants to be big. Accordingly, the whole thing seems conceptually overdriven. Pumpkins singer, guitarist and great artist Billy Corgan writes, lyrics and sings as if punk hadn’t rightly put an end to the whole rock opera nonsense in 1977. They have sold millions of records with it.

The triple album “Atum” was released in 2023, which, according to Corgan, was the third part of a trilogy that began in 1995 with “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. For example, in 33 songs and over two hours, the artist tells the “saga” of Shiny to the end, a former rock star who was shot into space for some somewhat vague thought crime. This Shiny returns to earth – the rulers try to harness him for their own purposes; the fans from back then want to preserve his legacy. The whole thing quickly gets lost in vagueness and vagueness, but one can assume that the confusion in its structure-forming megalomania is closely linked to the self-design of the artist persona that Billy Corgan has had in mind since “Atum” at the latest.

Since the Smashing Pumpkins think they have to create great sound art, they run the risk of everything sounding like “Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ ordered on Wish.” The silly pompousness constantly threatens and puts a heavy burden on the songs, which are always quite beautiful in themselves. Long before their re-formation in 2006, the Smashing Pumpkins had released two very good grunge albums with “Gish” and “Siamese Dream” at the beginning of the 90s. Corgan’s voice always took some getting used to, as they say, but that’s just a matter of taste. But the compressed guitars infected by shoegaze and stoner rock were great back then.

On the new album with the once again very artistic title “Aghori Mhori Mei”, the band happily distances itself from the keyboard bombast that has tended to dominate in recent years and unpacks the axe. The first three tracks sound like they could have been released in 1996. Of course, it’s still maximally ambitious and with a claim to deepness around the corner (“War Dreams Of Itself”), namely the kind of deepness that is built close to the banal. Unfortunately, when things get ballad-like, the Smashing Pumpkins always get a bit uncomfortably sticky.

In any case, Corgan sings a lot of unusual words, which makes the lyrics seem like they were written with a dictionary of synonyms always at hand on the desk (“On the down/ Need a hit of iridium/ On the town and tedium/ Ghastly bland chameleons” ). But no matter, as a person who grew up in non-English speaking regions of the world, you can deliberately ignore it. To then be happy about a few songs that are suitable for air guitar competitions and then to be tormented by the artifice that is now really inevitable for this band.

Smashing Pumpkins: »Aghori Mhori Mei« (Martha’s Music – Thirty Tigers/Membran)

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