Posts Tagged ‘Billy Corgan’

The SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Cyr “

Posted: November 29, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Smashing Pumpkins released their new album, “Cyr”, which marks the second studio project from the mostly-reunited line-up. The core group of Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin previously came together in 2018 the follow-up to 2018’s Rick Rubin–produced “Shiny And Oh So Bright Vol. 1: No Past. No Future. No Sun”.

Billy Corgan has produced the Smashing Pumpkins’ Cyr, is also the second project from the group since Corgan reunited with founding band members.  A double album, it’s also accompanied by a five-part animated series titled “In Ashes” which pairs the singles with a linear storyline of a dystopian society. The fourth installment, “Owl Wait“, premiered on Tuesday and the fifth has yet to be revealed. 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,

This album’s release marks the latest checkmark for The Smashing Pumpkins, who have ramped up production on a bevy of new projects. Last month, the band revealed plans for a sequel to their classic 2000’s Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, as well as an elaborate 25th Anniversary tour whenever such a feat is possible. Corgan has also stated that Cyr is merely part two of a three-album cycle that began with Shiny And Oh So Bright and will come to a conclusion with a future record.

Apparently 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. While Iha’s guitars remain satisfyingly gnarled for most of the 20 tracks on Cyr, Corgan’s runic lyricism (Minerva is named after the Roman goddess of war, Ramona and Wyttch come packed with hexes and spell-craft) largely comes attached to upbeat, enigmatic synth-pop. It’s kind of Arcadian electro, There are moments of harder hitting electro-rock, such as Wyttch and The Colour Of Love, and even some industrial grinding on Anno Satana (which translates as – gulp – ‘year of Satan’),

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.

Back in August, The Smashing Pumpkins began releasing singles from the 20-track album on a regular basis. In all, the 90s pop-grunge powerhouse put out eight singles ahead of the official release of Cyr. 

Taken together, all of the singles and In Ashes episodes delivered fragments of the Cyr picture. In these pieces of the portrait, The Smashing Pumpkins are shown to be looking ahead based on the futuristic, techno-pop influences found on many of the singles.

However, on songs like “Wyttch”, the band is still able to tap into the heavier influences that fans identify them with from the 1990s. With the full release of Cyr, audiences can now hear how all of these influences fit together to carve the path forward for the group.

Double album, CYR, coming Friday, November 27th, via Sumerian Records.

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The SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Cyr / The Colour of Love “

Posted: August 28, 2020 in MUSIC
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The Smashing Pumpkins have unveiled two new songs, ‘Cyr’ and ‘The Colour of Love’.

“Cyr is dystopic folly,” Billy Corgan explains of the track, “one soul against the world sort of stuff, set against a backdrop of shifting loyalties and sped up time. To me it stands as both hopeful and dismissive of what is and isn’t possible with faith.” The track arrives with a special live performance, shot remotely in lockdown, split between Chicago and Los Angeles. The clip was directed by Linda Strawberry.

“This is a goth fever dream of pent up emotion – an artistic visual release attempting to create a momentary escape from the emotional black cloud hanging over all of us this year,” Strawberry explains. “A dark seduction filmed in quarantine at a social distance.”

It marks the first new material we’ve heard from the band since their 2018 Rick Rubin-produced album, Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / Lp: No Past. No Future. No Sun. The record was recorded with the line up of founding members Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin alongside longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder.

In an interview with Tennessean Corgan revealed that the band had plans to release a double album later this year. Heralding the forthcoming record “the first real album” since the band’s reunion, a subtly snarky takedown of the band’s 2018 effort. “This is the first album since the album that came out in 2000, Machina, where me, James [Iha] and Jimmy [Chamberlin] worked on something for a very long time,” Corgan explained. “It’s got a greater conceptual base, and it’s probably a wider swath of music.

“The last one was kind of like, “Let’s just jump in, record some stuff real fast, and let it be what it is… so I’m excited about this because we’re kind of back in the lane of taking a risk, and trying to bring something new to the table, as opposed to just aping what we’re known for. ”

SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Gish ” Classic Albums Released 28th May 1991

Posted: May 29, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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On May 28th, 1991 The Smashing Pumpkins released their debut album ‘Gish’. Billy Corgan performed nearly all of the guitar and bass parts on the record.  They had been an active band for the 3 years before the release of this album, playing small shows here and there in their hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

Upon its release, it was quite positively acclaimed. This was, of course, in May of ’91.

Arriving several months before Nirvana’s Nevermind, the Smashing Pumpkins‘ debut album, “Gish”, which was also produced by Butch Vig, was the first shot of the alternative revolution that transformed the rock & roll landscape of the ’90s. While Nirvana was a punk band, the Smashing Pumpkins and guitarist/vocalist Billy Corgan were arena rockers, co-opting their metallic riffs and epic art rock song structures with self-absorbed lyrical confessions. Though Corgan’s lyrics fall apart upon close analysis, there’s no denying his gift for arrangements. Like Brian May and Jimmy Page, he knows how to layer guitars for maximum effect, whether it’s on the pounding, sub-Sabbath rush of “I Am One” or the shimmering, psychedelic dream pop surfaces of “Rhinoceros.”

Such musical moments like these, as well as the rushing “Siva” and the folky “Daydream,” which features D’Arcy on lead vocals, demonstrate the Smashing Pumpkins‘ potential, but the rest of Gish sometimes falls prey to undistinguished songwriting and showy instrumentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSxPUXQFHgI

The album’s sessions, lasting 30 working days, were brisk by Pumpkins‘ standards, largely because of the group’s inexperience.The recording sessions put an intense strain on the band, with bassist D’arcy Wretzky later commenting that she did not know how the band survived it, and Corgan explaining he suffered a nervous breakdown

Regarding the album’s thematic content, Corgan would later say,

The album is about pain and spiritual ascension. People ask if it’s a political album. It’s not a political album, it’s a personal album. In a weird kind of way, Gish is almost like an instrumental album—it just happens to have singing on it, but the music overpowers the band in a lot of places. I was trying to say a lot of things I couldn’t really say in kind of intangible, unspeakable ways, so I was capable of doing that with the music, but I don’t think I was capable of doing it with words.

“Gish” went platinum 8 years after its release. As far as debuts go, this one is a masterpiece. You’ll love this album;

The band:  Jimmy Chamberlin – drums, Billy Corgan – vocals, lead guitar, bass, keyboards, piano, production, James Iha – rhythm guitar, vocals, D’arcy Wretzky – bass, vocals, lead vocals on “Daydream”, layouts

The SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Solara “

Posted: June 10, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Smashing Pumpkins have released “Solara,” the first song by the classic lineup’s partial reunion and the first to feature Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin since 2000.

“Solara” is one of the eight titles Billy Corgan revealed earlier this year that resulted in studio sessions with producer Rick Rubin and longtime collaborator Jeff Schroeder in place of original bassist D’Arcy Wretsky.

Other titles include “Alienation,” “Travels,” “Silvery Sometimes,” “With Sympathy,” “Marchin’ On,” “Knights of Malta” and “Seek and You Shall Destroy.” The band said it was hoping to release the material on two EPs.

“I would say this is the happiest time of the band,” Corgan told The New York TImes recently. “It’s a bit akin to trying to rekindle a romance almost two decades later. The love is there, but, you know, is the language? Is the magic there?” It seemed to be, after the music “just poured out” and, he said, “pick[ed] up where this unit left off.”

Corgan noted that he had become unnecessarily outspoken as the band fractured in the ‘90s, which had left him appearing to be a “class-A heel.” “To my discredit, I didn’t realize that that formula only works if you’re winning commercially,” he admitted. Once that was no longer the case, “you’re just a jerk with a bad message.”

The Smashing Pumpkins start their Shiny and Oh So Bright North American tour on July 12th in Glendale, Ariz.; it runs through September. 9th in Edmonton. The shows mark the band’s 30th anniversary and feature material from across its catalog along with a selection of some of the new tracks

The first recording in over 18 years to feature founding members Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin. Recorded in Malibu, CA at Shangri La Studios with producer Rick Rubin and longtime Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder.

The SMASHING PUMPKINS – ” Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness ” Released 23rd October 1995

Posted: October 23, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Produced by frontman Billy Corgan; The Smashing Pumpkins’ third album is a twenty-eight-track opus of incredible scope and wonderment. Led by single Bullet with Butterfly Wings, The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D’arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha the album shot to the top of the charts and spawned a number of great singles. It has sold over ten-million units and considered one of the finest albums from the 1990s. Many would question the audacity of a group including twenty-eight tracks on an album. The fact there are no weak moments is backed by a record which sees the U.S. band present their most engaging and ambitious work yet. Billy Corgan’s unique and exceptional song writing is given room to breathe and explore. Mellon Collie’ helped reshape the face of Alternative-Rock, almost single-handedly. It is always a risk releasing a double album – regardless of how good you are – but The Smashing Pumpkins had no fear.

Go big or go home. That’s pretty much what this came down to. 25 years ago Smashing Pumpkins were commercial and critical darlings, coming off the scene-setting “Gish” and the monumental alt-rock statement of “Siamese Dream”. Their next move was a risk – a double album that shaped up as an anachronism on one hand and a potential commercial and critical disaster on the other. Their label told them as much, but Billy Corgan was set on it. “Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness” had to happen.

At this remove, it’s hard to imagine a world where the Pumpkins didn’t take the nuclear option. Mellon Collie feels like the last great hurrah for a certain breed of Gen X American rock band, a final grand statement from a disparate group of artists bound together by the fact that they’d upended the pop apple cart by accident.

Lacking the slash and burn punk streak of Nirvana and the cinematic dourness of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the wider Seattle set, Corgan’s music always felt more classic, more florid, less deliberately of the moment. But it’s easy to forget that both Gish and Siamese Dream were defined in part by their succinctness – shoegaze-literate hit after shoegaze-literate hit. Split across two sides that represented day and night, Mellon Collie’s sprawl was startling by comparison: 28 songs (totalling two hours) made the cut, and three times as many were written in a spree that recalled Bruce Springsteen’s feverish hot streak in the build up to Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

“I went around saying I was inspired by Pink Floyd‘s The Wall to try to create that kind of big, ambitious thing,” Corgan told David Wild in the liner notes for Mellon Collie’s 2012 reissue. “And, of course, jerks in the media still take me to task for saying that. For the record, from my point of view, I wasn’t trying to say that I had written my Wall … what I meant was that we were trying to reach for something expansive like Pink Floyd achieved with The Wall, as opposed to making a double album like The White Album by the Beatles, which was basically a wider collection of great songs by a group.”

Chief Pumpkin Billy Corgan was certainly on a creative streak in the early to mid-1990s. Between Siamese Dream, the outtakes collection Pisces Iscariot, the triple-LP length Mellon Collie, and the collection of b-sides compiled on 1996’s The Aeroplane Flies High (which showcased almost 30 new outtakes, although some were covers or written by guitarist James Iha). In this era, The Smashing Pumpkins released about 7 hours of new music recorded between December 1992 and August 1995, much of it written by Corgan, while even more music would surface on later reissues of Mellon Collie and The Aeroplane Flies High.

‘Set the Ray to Jerry’ is one of many Pumpkins outtakes that surfaced on The Aeroplane Flies High, as a b-side to 1989. It shares the gentle insistence of ‘1979’, moodily intense but never launching into a full-blooded rocker. It’s simple, with just drums, a simple James Iha guitar lead, and Corgan on bass. It was apparently written during the Gish tour, and dates back to the Siamese Dream sessions – Corgan told Guitar World that producer Flood vetoed the song.

  • Billy Corgan – Lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, piano, keyboards, autoharp, production, mixing, string arrangements
  • Jimmy Chamberlin – Drums, vocals
  • James Iha – Rhythm and lead guitar, vocals, mixing, additional production
  • D’arcy Wretzky – Bass, vocals

Originally Released 23rd October 1995

EX-COPS – ” Tragically Allright ” Feat Ariel Pink

Posted: September 14, 2014 in MUSIC
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From the upcoming album “Daggers” recorded in Los Angeles to be released on Downtown Records, due in late October the Brooklyn outfit EX-COPS  Amalie Bruun and Brian who co wrote a couple of songs with Ariel Pink, also on backing vocals is the Germs drummer Don Bollen, the album is  produced by Billy Corgan . The band go on tour as support with the DumDum Girls. Check out the new video as well for the song “Black Soap”