- It's probably going to be useful for this review to define what sort of Smashing Pumpkins fan I am. I'm the sort of fan who, nearly two decades after the end of the initial iteration of the band ceased, will still get the urge every year or so to listen to all of their albums over the span of a week or two. The sort of fan who enjoyed virtually everything they released in that initial run, even the 28 B-sides from the already overblown Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness double album. A fan who thought that their 2007 reboot album Zeitgeist would have made an alright EP, but at album length was at least half filled with dross. And, lastly, a fan who actually really enjoyed their past two albums, 2012's proggy Oceania and 2014's streamlined Monuments To An Elegy, despite the relatively muted response they each received upon release.
So that brings us to Shiny & Oh So Bright, Vol 1. / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. An album title that pips even the great Mellon Collie for obtuseness (and there's no way I'm ever going to refer to it by that full title ever again). It's the first album featuring both original guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin since the band first broke up at the turn of the millennium (Chamberlin did feature on Zeitgeist, while original bassist Darcy Wretsky has not rejoined the band). It comes with lead Pumpkin Billy Corgan seemingly in good form – his last two Pumpkins albums reconnected him with his strengths after a decade or so in a bit of a songwriting wilderness, and now his two strongest sidekicks are back in the fold.
Things certainly don't start particularly strongly. Unlike the other three reboot albums, which all kicked off with full-steam-ahead riff rockers, opener 'Knights Of Malta' is a mid-tempo, kind of flat song that pairs some fairly unmemorable melodies with a number of bizarre production choices: there's an ill-conceived vocal loop that appears under the choruses, some female soul backing vocals that jar, and strings playing a melody that gets really irritating really quickly. The result is reminiscent of some of the worst of Corgan's experiments in the Teargarden By Kaleidyscope series of releases; a weird melange of musical parts that don't mesh well, strung over a song that's just not that good. It's not THAT bad, but it's such a surprisingly bleh way to start a record.
Luckily 'Knights Of Malta' is easily the worst song here. It's immediately followed up by probably the strongest track on the record, single 'Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)', an upbeat guitar-pop song reminiscent of perhaps Corgan's greatest triumph, the hit single '1979'. It's not an out-and-out classic, but at the very least it could sit on any other Pumpkins album and not feel too out of place from a songwriting perspective. From there we get a pretty even split of rockers and more reflective tracks. The most effective of these are, respectively, 'Marchin' On' and 'Alienation' – the former containing the best collection of riffs on the record and a vocal performance that's the closest Corgan gets to recapturing his old venom, the latter a mini-epic that hints at the ambition of vintage Pumpkins. Elsewhere there's a pair of songs that are pretty good (fuzzed out comeback single 'Solara' and breath of fresh air 'With Sympathy') and another pair that are perfectly serviceable but perhaps a bit forgettable (the plodding 'Travels' and riffy 'Seek And You Shall Destroy').
But still, when was 'perfectly serviceable' what anyone wanted from The Smashing Pumpkins? Billy Corgan is probably the most 'love / hate' rockstar of the 90s, and his music has always followed suit. Perhaps the biggest criticism I can level at Shiny & Oh So Bright is that it seems like Monuments To An Elegy Part 2, but with less strong songs. The band have said that this album was something of an experiment to see if they can work well together again, and the 'Vol 1' in the title would indicate that there's more music to come, so let's hope that Vol 2 has Corgan finding that form of his from earlier this decade.
- Cameron Smith.