Send "Smashing Pumpkins " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Melancholy and the infinite guitar overdubsIt’s a sad fact: the Smashing Pumpkins’ stock has plummeted drastically since the band’s popularity crested in the mid-1990s. For a while, the Chicago group formed contemporary alternative rock’s Holy Trinity with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but the Pumpkins have since hastened down the path toward irrelevancy, due to distracting internal squabbling that led to line-up shuffles and a 2000 breakup, all while frontman Billy Corgan’s obstinate inclination to follow his muse has yielded wildly mixed results. The extremely devoted among the Pumpkins faithful will argue until they are blue in their faces in favor of the 2007 comeback LP Zeitgeist and the currently-ongoing Teargarden by Kaleidyscope song cycle, but everyone else sees Corgan carrying on without any of his original bandmates as he and his latest roll call run through the songwriter’s dodgy new material. It’s hard not to feel that the Pumpkins are a shadow of their former glory. At their creative peak, the Smashing Pumpkins were glorious, even if Corgan’s whiny singing voice and his flowery pretensions would always remain “love them or leave them” qualities for many. At the same time Corgan is busy polishing the latest Teargarden by Kaleidyscope installments, the public is provided with new remastered deluxe editions of the band’s first two albums, Gish (1991) and the breakthrough Siamese Dream (1993), the recordings responsible for the ascendancy of the classic Pumpkins line-up—singer/lead guitarist/chief songwriter Corgan, second guitarist James Iha, bassist D’arcy Wretzky, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin—to alt-rock supremacy. Both sets are generous packages. Nestled in gorgeous, candy-gloss lift-top boxes, each record is polished up a tad (I couldn’t find my original copy of Gish for a comparison, but I can verify that Siamese Dream is slightly louder and a tad sharper, with the only striking change being the removal of a barely-audible snippet of a televangelist sermonizing from the end of “Soma”) and served with a second CD of bonus tracks, a DVD containing a period performance from Chicago’s Metro venue, liner notes with track-by-track pontificating by the Corgster himself, and a heaping pile of striking postcards. The remastering jobs may be flimsy justification for repackaging old records, but it’s evident from an examination of the contents that equal amounts of loving care went into crafting what now sits on the store shelves. That is not to say that these two records are in the same league. They’re not. Released on Virgin Record’s “semi-indie” imprint Caroline a scant few months before alternative became big news, Gish—produced by Butch Vig with Corgan, whose “prove all the skeptics wrong” perfectionist streak led him to play most everything that wasn’t drums in the studio—is a promising yet not wholly cohesive record that displays a group trying to figure out what it wants to say and how to say it. Having originated as lukewarm Cure copyists, by 1991 the Pumpkins had hit upon a mixture of influences including goth, metal, psychedelia, and ‘70s arena rock, while also exploring shifting dynamics that would veer sharply from head-crushing heaviness to restrained delicacy. Jane’s Addiction is the primary comparison for the Gish-era Pumpkins (and an acknowledged inspiration, as Corgan stated in 2001 that the Los Angeles foursome “was the first band that told us you could combine the atmosphere of goth-rock with heavy metal and make it work”), but Corgan’s crew dispensed with that ensemble’s transgressive sexuality and prioritized the role of the guitars, which Corgan and Vig layered into what became a characteristic squadron of six-string overdubs. Thus armed, Gish aims to shock and stun by deploying heady rockers, including “I Am One”, “Bury Me”, “Tristessa”, and especially the awesome “Siva”, while also setting aside plenty of space for more subdued offerings like “Crush”, “Daydream”, and “Suffer”....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Melancholy and the infinite guitar overdubs It’s a sad fact: the Smashing Pumpkins’ stock has plummeted drastically since the band’s popularity crested in the mid-1990s. For a while, the Chicago group formed contemporary alternative rock’s Holy Trinity with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but the Pumpkins have since hastened down the path toward irrelevancy, due to distracting internal squabbling that led to line-up shuffles and a 2000 breakup, all while frontman Billy Corgan’s obstinate inclination to follow his muse has yielded wildly mixed results. The extremely devoted among the Pumpkins faithful will argue until they are blue in their faces in favor of the 2007 comeback LP Zeitgeist and the currently-ongoing Teargarden by Kaleidyscope song cycle, but everyone else sees Corgan carrying on without any of his original bandmates as he and his latest roll call run through the songwriter’s dodgy new material. It’s hard not to feel that the Pumpkins are a shadow of their former glory. At their creative peak, the Smashing Pumpkins were glorious, even if Corgan’s whiny singing voice and his flowery pretensions would always remain “love them or leave them” qualities for many. At the same time Corgan is busy polishing the latest Teargarden by Kaleidyscope installments, the public is provided with new remastered deluxe editions of the band’s first two albums, Gish (1991) and the breakthrough Siamese Dream (1993), the recordings responsible for the ascendancy of the classic Pumpkins line-up—singer/lead guitarist/chief songwriter Corgan, second guitarist James Iha, bassist D’arcy Wretzky, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin—to alt-rock supremacy. Both sets are generous packages. Nestled in gorgeous, candy-gloss lift-top boxes, each record is polished up a tad (I couldn’t find my original copy of Gish for a comparison, but I can verify that Siamese Dream is slightly louder and a tad sharper, with the only striking change being the removal of a barely-audible snippet of a televangelist sermonizing from the end of “Soma”) and served with a second CD of bonus tracks, a DVD containing a period performance from Chicago’s Metro venue, liner notes with track-by-track pontificating by the Corgster himself, and a heaping pile of striking postcards. The remastering jobs may be flimsy justification for repackaging old records, but it’s evident from an examination of the contents that equal amounts of loving care went into crafting what now sits on the store shelves. That is not to say that these two records are in the same league. They’re not. Released on Virgin Record’s “semi-indie” imprint Caroline a scant few months before alternative became big news, Gish—produced by Butch Vig with Corgan, whose “prove all the skeptics wrong” perfectionist streak led him to play most everything that wasn’t drums in the studio—is a promising yet not wholly cohesive record that displays a group trying to figure out what it wants to say and how to say it. Having originated as lukewarm Cure copyists, by 1991 the Pumpkins had hit upon a mixture of influences including goth, metal, psychedelia, and ‘70s arena rock, while also exploring shifting dynamics that would veer sharply from head-crushing heaviness to restrained delicacy. Jane’s Addiction is the primary comparison for the Gish-era Pumpkins (and an acknowledged inspiration, as Corgan stated in 2001 that the Los Angeles foursome “was the first band that told us you could combine the atmosphere of goth-rock with heavy metal and make it work”), but Corgan’s crew dispensed with that ensemble’s transgressive sexuality and prioritized the role of the guitars, which Corgan and Vig layered into what became a characteristic squadron of six-string overdubs. Thus armed, Gish aims to shock and stun by deploying heady rockers, including “I Am One”, “Bury Me”, “Tristessa”, and especially the awesome “Siva”, while also setting aside plenty of space for more subdued offerings like “Crush”, “Daydream”, and “Suffer”....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| It’s the early ‘90s — a time where Nirvana’s Nevermind has struck fear into the hearts of arena giants of the ’80s and left record executives scouring the dingiest clubs of the U.S. to try to hop on this “grunge train.” Somewhere in Chicago, Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins have already recorded Gish, a solid-but-scatterbrained debut album, and the band is not-so-quietly flipping the bird to indie music and everything for which it stands. “We start (Siamese Dream) with ‘Cherub Rock,’ which is basically my big F.U. to the indie world,” Corgan said in Siamese Dream’s re-released liner notes. “If you read the lyrics, that was basically me railing against the hipper-than-thou NYC indie mentality.” And so Corgan, the alternative artist he was at the time, was left rallying against pretty much everyone. But it’s this attitude that made him such a unique character in a scene that was quickly on the rise, ranging from his questionable clothing taste, his incredibly revealing lyrics and his skillful-yet-artfully atonal guitar solos. But with a fresh look at his band’s first two albums, Gish and Siamese Dream it’s hard to see how anyone — including Nirvana’s first label, Sub Pop, who initially rejected the Pumpkins — didn’t like his approach to begin with. As the band’s opening statement, Gish can be confusing. For legions of fans that were introduced by singles like “Disarm” or “Today” that appeared on the band’s huge-label debut, Siamese Dream, the album is surprisingly hookless. Yeah, it features qualities that would launch the band to superstardom — Corgan’s love-it-or-hate-it snarl, mixes with an over-stacked amount of guitars and Jimmy Chamberlin’s jazz-inspired drum parts — but it’s obvious the group hasn’t really arrived yet on Gish. Instead, Corgan says it best, admitting that “there really aren’t a lot of great songs (on Gish), it’s really more of a dynamic statement. I wouldn’t say there are many great songs but there are a lot of great ideas that are taking chances.” As a remastered package, the Butch Vig-produced Gish does deliver for both hardcore fans and casual listeners. What’s so unique about the package isn’t only seeing the band’s first attempt at a full-length recording, but it also fills in the space between Gish and the amazing jump that is Siamese Dream. The outtakes and concert included in the set are meaty without going overboard and let audiences remember the band at a time when Corgan had a huge mane of hair and wore ruffled shirts, and sludgy Stratocaster riffs and solos were still a prominent part of the group’s mission statement....full text |
Smashing Pumpkins lyrics
