Following on from my, as yet, incomplete Radiohead defense, I'm gonna follow it up with another relatively huge band that, perhaps, a lot of people think I shouldn't like.

There's something undeniably magnetic about The Smashing Pumpkins music. They basically took the prog and stadium rock of the 70s and early Eighties and tooled it up for the nineties. How does it work?

1) Billy Corgan's guitar work
Huge riffs, often multi-tracked almost to oblivion, solos whose role it seems to be to jettison into space at the earliest opportunity, effects used to reverberate around your head, his arranging of those mystical and bludgeoning guitar lines, feedback, harmonies, fuzz upon unending fuzz.....even on Adore (the anti-rock record) there's some beautiful guitar work underlying the drum machines and synthery.

2) Billy Corgan's voice
A Marmite voice for sure - it's could be borderline terrible but it's uniqueness and utter conviction made The Smashing Pumpkins sound like no one else. It somehow suited the utter chaos going on around it, to the point where it sticks out more on Zeitgeist (arguably their heaviest record) even with the guitars sounding like war machines.

3) Prolific
This can be a horrendous thing 1) quality control and 2) difficult to know where to start and continue
Basically, I thing the Pumpkins are a band that started off pretty mediocre really - Gish isn't great apart from the first four songs and Tristessa - before leaping to greatness almost instantly. Suddenly, after Siamese Dream, we had a B-sides, rarities and outtakes collection, a follow-up album that was 2 discs long, a box set of EPs etc., a 16 track single album and then a proposed double album with three EPs of off cuts. Just take a look at the digital rarities collection - how many songs? What's more, there's hardly a dud among them. Which is, frankly, terrifying. Even now, after the alright come back album Zeitgeist, we have had a great little acoustic EP American Gothic, two new singles (G.L.O.W. and FOL - what's with the initials?) backed with Superchrist and Gossamer, and promises of more releases along those lines.

4) Album quality

GISH
As I said earlier, pretty average but half of the album is actually brilliant. I Am One and Siva are defining moments in the Pumpkins canon, with riffs and solos and "reset" ideas all punctuating them. Rhinocerous is a great example of the future for Billy's longer songwriting (this actually being one of the best actually). Tristessa is a great pop rock song and Bury does its job. For a debut, 5 classic songs is damn fine.

SIAMESE DREAM
In scope and ability this record is outstanding. Beginning with the drawn out drumming and open stringed riffing of alt rock pioneering Cherub Rock, it's almost Corgan saying: "This is how we sound, and Cherub Rock is our genre". The guitars are charged with shuttle thrusters, sounding thicker, heavier and bolder than any guitar sound ever has. With the Drop D ascending riff of Quiet, it sounds like some threatening death rock album. Come Today though, melody leaps to the forefront - an ice cream truck tune being filtered through metal histrionics - and all bets are off. Soma's gentile-multi layering of reverb and guitars before almighty explosions show Billy's imagination rocketing away. Album highlight, Mayonaise, is penned by both Corgan and Iha and showcases alternate tunings and dynamics at the core of what they do. Silverfuck is a real overstep, proving to be drawn out and pompous but giving a threat rather than a real warning shot. It's still got something which is jucily metallic. Followed by Sweet Sweet's lullaby before the luxiorous Luna, the record is a massive triumph. That's without mentioning the album's acoustic centrepiece Disarm, one of the most simple and elegant songs in their catalogue.

Pisces Iscariot
Released between their breakthrough masterpiece and their commerical goliath peering round the corner, this covers B-sides, outtakes etc. and really shows how prolific Billy is - and how consistent he can be. It openes with the beautiful and aptly named Soothe. When Billy's voice breaks, with the proximity of the mic, it sounds honest and cutting. Billy's phaser effect gets a major work out on a lot of these songs, twisting, revolving and spiralling around his solos, mutating them as you listen. It even gives a showcase for James Iha's first solo songwriting effort for SP: Blew Away. It's sweet, but inconsequential, a lot like the man's solo album. Pissant is a real angry, fast number, very different to what's come before, but an indicator of what was to come. Perhaps my fave is Hello Kitty Kat, a real distorted mess of a song that echoes a heavier Mayonaise. You can practically hear the speakers imploding in protest at the destroyed mix. Though quality depletes towards the end of this collection, Corgan's solo cover of Landlisde is lovely. Basically this could've been the band's third record and people would still love it, but they may not have been half the band they become.

Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness
Disc 1
Jaw droppingly long, yet instilled with quality beyond it's number of tracks (28). Beginning with a piano intro and synthesised strings, it bursts into Tonight Tonight (the first Pumpkins song I actually properly listened to, as I wasn't into their heavier stuff like Bullet With Butterfly Wings at the time). This dramatic, orchestral sweep is so far and away from the distorted guitar symphonies of yore that it seems nonsense to expect anything but a huge break away from Siamese Dream.
Stirring as it is, though, it gets torn apart by the following two tracks. Jellybelly sounds so fiercely distorted, it might as well be on fire. It's actually insane. There's an excruciating build up two thirds in which more than proves Billy wasn't done with abusing guitars and studios by a long shot. The staccato harmonic riff of Zero follows, showing a direct, vicious, stabbing arrangement that uses far less multi-tracking and far more emotion. The solo is sheer pitch shifting, ring modulating, octaving genius. Here Is No Why, relatively calm, is one of the greatest Pumpkins songs in it's clever melodic nuances and percussive chord playng. And that solo too. Minor US hit Bullet With Butterfly Wings follows, and, with the video, really brings to the fore the gothic chic that would become the SP's central theme for the rest of their career. Dark, metallic, lyrically devilish - it's their trademark track in the eyes of many. It's arguably also the first real screaming we get from Billy. To Forgive sticks out after so much heaviness, yet still resonates as an important transitional track almost halfway through the first disc. Barely played guitars shiver underneath Billy's laments. Hints of electronica slip out here too. An Ode To No One seems incongruous after such ugly beauty. It's a proper brutal sleaze metal thrash out. Love is another contrast, a fuzzy minimal trudge through static and Billy's nasal whine. It's extremely effective, like having a shower in guilt and shame. At about 2:44 is one of the album's many sweet spots. The insane filtered solo is haunting. Cupid De Locke feels like a bubble bath and a sleep on a cloud after Love's grime. Then Galapogos returns to Soma territory, with gentle arpeggios washing you upon a beach. Though slow to start, it eventually turns into a shifting, granular sifting sound. It's arrrangement is clever and affecting. Muzzle, though pretty standard rock, is so triumphant, it stands out as one of their best songs and shows that even when Billy strips it all back to its roots, his common thread is a sense of melody. By this time your sweating from the effort of listening, knowing there's still thirty tracks to go. Porcelina Of the Vast Oceans gives you a prolonged two minute intro, though one adorned with peaks and troughs after the injection of adrenaline from Muzzle. It then alternately drifts and jolts you across it's nine plus minutes. It was the perfect set opener for their Zeitgeist tour in 2008. In some wasy it's the perfect SP track. THe final disc ends with the whispering James Iha ballad, Take Me Down, which is actually beautiful.

Disc 2
It ricochets you into life with the noisy, pick scraping thirty seconds intro to Where Boys Fear To Tread. A discordant, sludgey opener, it's a real antithesis to the last third of the first disc (albeit with added doo-wop backing vocals). That's even before the most violent track, Bodies, comes screaming out of the (hell) gates with it's drop D octaving and full-bloodied screaming from Corgan. It's incredible. Thirty-Three, the weakest single from the album, still sounds lovely in context although it's the awkward acoustic atmospherics of In The Arms of Sleep that overrides it, meaning Thirty-Three is stranded between two album highlights. Then the best single from the album, 1979, is next; Billy's New Order tribute. A wonderful song that should be remembered as an all time classic. Following this is one of the two most fucked up mixes on the album, Tales of a Scorched Earth (X.Y.U. is the other). It sounds stupidly lo-fi and ridiculous in the album, and basically destroys the flow of the second disc. It's a fair enough rock out, with Corgan's most throat-burning vocal performance. But fighting through mic distortion you couldn't tell anyway. Luckily the gorgeous, wobbly layers of Thru The Eyes of Ruby and the simple acoustic picking of Stumbeline peel away those nasty memories. X.Y.U.s blistering rock ends the distorted section of the album, being throwaway and pointless, yet still feeding us the requisite distortion quoitant for an SP album. The last five tracks are strangely quaint and seem pretty poor, though they all suit the theme of the album, but they're almost embarassing efforts after such a trawl through Billy's imagination. It could be argued these stripped back melodic songs are a worthy rest period for the listener, but they're more likely to be skipped completely. By Starlight is the best of them. Strangely Lily (My One and Only) was dug out for the 2008 tour, which made sense live, but it's really not a creative high. It ends, appropriately, with all four voices of the band - finally united - on Farewell and Goodnight, on a sweet lullaby for the weary listener.
Overall, it's an incredible achievement which no other band of the era come close to matching.

ADORE
Having realised he could write songs without electric guitars, distortion, riffs and evne a drummer (there's more to this obviously, but it's funnier to just leave it at that), Adore became something altogether more intriguing. From the opener To Shiela's gentle beginnings, it's strange to be greeted by the throbbing synth bass of Ava Adore, somehow heavier than some of the guitar tracks from Mellon Collie ever managed. It's one of the cleverist modern singles in decades and continues to wow with it's minimal depth. Here the album explodes into a sinister, murderous, lamenting epic, feeling deeper and longer than Mellon Collie as the mood perpetuates the entire album, rather than hopping genres like the double-disc of yore did.
The electronic Daphne Descends is like shivering death, Once Upon A Time is a tear-jerking ode to Billy's dead mother, Tear is like being pulled from death's grip into bleakness, Crestfallen is a devastating musical journey of loss. After all this shadowy blackness, Appels and Oranjes is a glorious, unrepetant dance number that revels in it's contrary nature. It's excellent. Pug returns to Ava Adore's earlier rock ideas, while still forgoing obvious multi-tracked riffs. The last handful of tracks seem patchy but are well sequenced. We have The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete's country-esque story, Annie-Dog's cracked voice and piano lull, Shame's severe atmospherics before the heavy synth crescendo of Behold! The Night Mare (another track resurrected successfully for the 2008 tour). The final two tracks, For Martha and Blank page, are two brilliant, underrated songs in their canon (as is Night Mare). 17 is merely obliuque piano feedback - a strange, disconnected end to, what is probably the best SP album, while being chronically underloved by critics and general public. It's such an all pervading work, it may aswell be their masterpiece.

MACHINA/The Machines of God
Which is why, when the uber-distorted bass and guitar of opener The Everlasting Gaze kicks in, every fan the world over celebrated. It's a fantastic reminder that SP are incredibly adept at crafting songs that work in stadiums and living rooms. The right blend of riff and atrmospherics thunders through this collection. However, it's the first time you feel the flaws really hold back the artistry on display. Raindrops and Sunshowers sounds like a tip of the hat to Adore so as not to show they've forgotten their best period....but it brings and overly Eighties feel to an album that needed to sound alien. Stand Inside Your Love is a cracking single, all jangling intro riffs and bellowing, lava stream chorus. I of the Mourning, through lyrically dire, is one of the most effective songs on the album, it's distant, haunted echoes retaining that Eighties feel, while still sounding like SP. The countermelodies featured in The Sacred and the Profane are the best thing about the song, while Try Try Try was an inexplicably popular single. It's a relentlessly dismal song that somehow resonates with fans. Certainly it plays a part in the album, but it's not a song I choose to listen to very often. By Heavy Metal Machine, it seems clear that this album is hitting buttons, but not to the same extent or to the same effect. It's a fuzzed up monster, but really feels quite novelty (apart from the chorus, which is wonderful). THings get forgettable fro here on in. Though there are peaks (the utter weirdness of The Imploding Voice, the melodic pop high of Wound, the delightful fast gentle-punk of closer Age of Innocence) and clear trudges through boredom (the ten minute Glass and the Ghost CHildren, the overwrought electronics of The Crying Tree of Mercury and Blue Skies Bring Tears). There are some memorable moments but overall it's a massive drop in quality.

MACHINA II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music
The second half of the proposed double LP starts, bewilderingly, with a real balls to the wall punk number, Glass. Then comes the industrial thrash of Cash Car Star, a live favourite. Dross continues this sleazy rock intro, seemingly in keeping with the loose "rock star" concept behind the MACHINA set. It's still vastly different to the mammoth polished Eighties sheen that dogs Machines of God. Real Love, a track rescued from the download-only ghetto by the Greatest Hits set, stands out as the blistering, fizzy epic single (that never was). With a lot in common with Stand.. it's infinitely sweeter and less bombastic. Go is a dismissable diversion, while Let Me Give The World To You is the almost cynically targeted commercial single (that never was...again). Acoustic baked, half-hearted verse melody, it's not great. Infact the next few tracks are just fodder until the almost unlistenable White Spyder - not because it's bad but because of the vinyl-to-mp3 transition everything sounds drowned out by the heaviness of it. It's in fact one of the best chugging rock songs they've ever produced. There's still four tracks after this. They're as bad as the last part of Machines of God. Pretty dire as far as records go, though there are definite stand outs in their catalogue not to be missed in the first third.

ZEITGEIST
Comprising only of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, this record could well be their heaviest. It's drenched in droning open strings, harmony voices and noisy guitar playing, easily matching the hardest moments on MACHINA/The Machines of God. Initial impressions were pretty poor. The songs sounded cliched and messy, but reassessment sees it's probably more consistent than either of the MACHINA dual set.
The primary problem is the weakness of the lead vocals, somehow not as powerful in the face of these walls of guitars and Jimmy's drumming. Perhaps this is why the harmonies are all over the place. THe other problem is the prolonged jamming found on United States (an unfortunate live set staple) and the drawn out death of Pomp and Circumstances and For God and Country. These tracks hark back to Silverfuck, Ghost and the Glass Children and the other worst excesses of Billy's guitar work outs. It may be these indulgences that make That's The Way (My Love Is), Tarantula, Bring The Light, (C'Mon) Let's Go and Bleed The Orchid sound comparatively brilliant. Overall it's quite a drab album, with little light and shade but still hangs together better than MACHINA's overlong work. On this evidence, however, there's no debating the reasons for their rejection of the album format from now on.


Overall, The Smashing Pumpkins are a band everyone loves to hate and Zeitgeist was seen as a massive failiure, to the delight of those who see Corgan as a massive egotistical rock dinosaur. Nevertheless, his earlier work cannopt be ignored.
Steve Albini reckoned SP were "made of and for the mainstream". This is probably entirely true - Billy's lullaby melodies are pretty pop - but it's the uneasy pairing of interstellar-bound guitars, arena rock pomp and elegant melodic ideas that make them what they are. Mainstream they became, but only in a climate where grunge became a household name could they have even began a career in music. If there is a modern equivalent - a baffling success that is, nevertheless, deserved - it's Muse. It'll be interesting to see what happens now they've hit their peak.