Corgan tries unconventional release for new album


Recently, Billy Corgan announced that his seminal ’90s band the Smashing Pumpkins would be releasing its first album since their 2007 comeback, Zeitgeist. This time, however, the lead singer has shed the only other founding member — drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — and is soldiering on as the sole remaining tie to the original Smashing Pumpkins.

The fool · The 44 songs on Teargarden by Kaleidyscope are inspired by Tarot cards and their characters. Above, watercolor album artwork. - Photo courtesy of TheSmashingPumpkins.com

The new album — whimsically titled Teargarden by Kaleidyscope — not only features a new drummer, 19–year–old Mike Byrne, but a new deployment scheme. While 2000’s Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music was subversively distributed online, it was mostly a plot to undermine Virgin Records’ unwillingness to give the Pumpkins a double album. Kaleidyscope, on the other hand, is being released as part of a web-based project that Corgan describes in several interviews as a way to bypass the process by which art is made and delivered.

The 44-song concept album, which is still being written, will be distributed digitally — one song at a time — until there is enough to realize Corgan’s vision of an 11 EP box set. More importantly, Corgan’s plan includes infinite amounts of no-strings-attached song downloading directly from the band’s official website.

Thankfully, the two songs that have been released so far are a positive introduction. “Widow Wake My Mind” sounds like Corgan’s more upbeat work with his side project Zwan and “Song For A Son,” which seems like a boring ballad at first, eventually layers guitars beautifully and a pretty awesome guitar solo.

Although the songs don’t resemble those sun–kissed, nostalgic songs of the Pumpkins’ earlier work (“Today,” “Soma,” “Crush”) or their songs that, quite frankly, rock (“Siva,” “Geek U.S.A.”), there’s no doubt that Corgan is still a very talented songwriter and some of his great harmonies are still apparent. But with only two songs released since Dec. 8 (the second arrived on Jan. 18) the entire experiment could take years to culminate.

Despite the fact that this is an experimental form of releasing music, Corgan’s complex history as the driving force behind the Smashing Pumpkins has prepared him. When Corgan brought the Smashing Pumpkins together in 1988, he expressed that he wanted the band to be his own artistic vision. He brought in James Iha, D’arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin as bandmates, but their presence has long been regarded as a façade of cool ’90s diversity that masked Corgan’s one-man show. Corgan not only wrote all the music for the band, but it has been rumored he snuck into the studio at night and re-recorded over the others’ parts. Corgan’s control over the band can’t be denied and it’s debatable whether or not the Smashing Pumpkins were ever really a band, an argument that rings even more true now. Corgan has acknowledged this dilemma, writing on his blog that the band is “just a name, THE Smashing Pumpkins.”

Despite questions to the Pumpkins’ current validity, however, Corgan’s exclusively downloadable release could be extremely successful, partly because Corgan embraced the Internet so early on. After the band officially broke up in 2000, Corgan took its album underground. Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music was released by giving 25 vinyl copies to friends and prominent fans,  complete with permission and instructions for online redistribution. A decade later, with the height of Corgan’s career far behind him, it might just be his current low profile that allows him to again be successful with the Internet in a way that artists trying to reach their peak could only hope for.

Regardless of whether Corgan’s new releases are successful or a total failure, at least a few people will be paying attention to the Pumpkins’ next move because of the intrigue. The story of the band’s career is one filled with huge success (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Siamese Dream), backstabbing (Corgan publicly declared that he hated his fellow Pumpkins) and major pitfalls (drug abuse, depression, Corgan’s embarrassing blogs). And with a 44-song box set being created at this moment, it can only get more interesting.

3 replies
  1. Siobhan
    Siobhan says:

    This is really something to look forward to-‘one song at a time’… I didn’t know about this. A whole new way of distributing music, bypassing the middle men, it sounds like. And songs based on Tarot Cards?? It is ‘intriguing’!
    Really great article. Thanks! Will be watching and waiting for the rest to come out.

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