Billy Corgan reminds me a bit of Pete Townshend. He just can’t seem to escape his own preoccupation with the band he built. Moreover, he seems torn between smart, sensitive expressiveness and the abandon of all-out sonic assaults. And nevermind that he’s a pretentious “art-teest” whose conceptualism seems to blow up in his face about as often as it pays off. That he does his screwing up very much in public only makes the comparison easier.
The reanimated semi-Pumpkins 20th Anniversary jaunt has been memorably declared “a shitshow” by Pitchforkmedia. And truth be told, Zeitgeist — a few cool tracks aside — is a sludgy, samey bummer. These missteps have been amplified by Corgan’s famous inability to shut his trap. Rather than biting down hard and carrying on, he’s taken every possible opportunity to make bold, ridiculous proclamations — from his full-page ad in the Sun Times announcing his intention to reform the Pumpkins to his recent “no more albums” promise to NME —
There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest…
Our primary function now is to be a singles band, that drives Pumpkins Inc through singles. We’ll still be creative, but in a different form.
Corgan does seem to be grinding some kind of axe w/r/t his once-and-future band not being taken seriously as a long-playing threat. The “shitshow” designation was largely a reaction to this hometown “meltdown” at the Chicago Theater.
Chicago Sun Times critic and frequent Corgan nemesis Jim DeRogatis supposes that the Corganmonster’s current public bad behavior is a conceptual stunt —
It’s only guessing, once again, but I’d say it’s all part of a statement
he’s trying to make about the reconstituted Pumpkins NOT being an oldies
act, alternative nostalgia or otherwise, and it is in fact on some
dramatic, horribly painful but ultimately brilliantly worthwhile odyssey
of its own, just like the old band. Remember, in his world, Smashing
Pumpkins tours are ordeals far more trying than any military campaign,
outdoing the misery even of Napoleon’s infamous retreat from Moscow. And
if they aren’t, they’re not worth doing. (See: Zwan.)
Read DeRo’s whole bloggy thing…
By my estimation, Corgan is just being a bit petulant and passing it off as a “concept” to dodge criticism. I remember seeing Townshend on some rockumentary bitching about how “all his friends are dead.” He had a point, but he was also being a whiny crank. Corgan seems to be doing the same thing here. Remember this is the guy who blamed Britney Spears for the Pumpkins break-up and whose recent critiques of American in the end times run about this deep…
What’s frustrating about watching Corgan struggle with his conceptual nonsense and big time rock ambitions is that his work is always best when he’s not trying so hard. Case in point, the relaxed, bootleg-only Machina II record has proven a much more enduring rock record than the forced, over-produced Machina.
In the early days of Zwan, Corgan and company played a number of small gigs showcasing a surprising number of sunny, ringing rocksongs. On top of these songs, the band’s second incarnation as the Djali Zwan was an outlet for acoustic material often rooted in American roots styles. Bootlegs of these Zwan performances reveal a band having fun playing to appreciative audiences in close quarters. I saw Zwan twice, once at Double Door before the release of Mary Star of the Sea and once at Metro in support of the album release. The Double Door show was a loose, engaging performance. The Metro show was a bit more “showbiz.” It’s a shame that Zwan fell apart before they could release the acoustic Djali Zwan material. From what I’ve heard, it’s some of the best and easiest-to-take Corgan material.
From Live at The Intersection 12-13-2001
MP3: Zwan, “Candy Came Calling”
I’m not saying that Corgan’s been completely wasting his talents of since chucking Zwan. I do wish he’d released the rumored acoustic concept record about Illinois rather than the labored retro mope rock of The Future Embrace. Even now with the Pumpkins, Corgan does manage to ease off the throttle and simply record a pleasant song once in a while. The best song on my copy of Zeitgeist (I have the Target version) is the tacked-on bonus track “Zeitgeist,” a simple acoustic number that cuts deeper that the previous hour of blazing guitar nonsense. And having been mostly disappointed by Zeitgeist, I was again pleasantly surprised when I heard this new acoustic number he’s done with the New Pumpkins.
VIDEO: “99 Floors”
I can understand why Corgan — who basically made his career on a really big guitar noise — might be unwilling to pack in the sturm und drang in favor of plain the old strum and clang as a singer/songwriter type. Nevertheless, his best stuff seems to come when he sticks with the dreamy stuff that has always been part of his formula.
For your consideration — American Gothic, a four-song stopgap released via iTunes in the States and on disc in Europe, is understandably a bit slight. It’s not a “major” statement like Zeitgeist was intended to be, and it’s all the better for it.
“The Rose March” is a comfortable listen, finding Corgan embracing the drowsy psychedelic feel of vintage Pumpkins a la the soft stuff on Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie. The lyrics are mostly mush, like much of Corgan’s writing. Still, this seeming problem doesn’t really detract because the words are mostly there to provide sound and the occasional romantic image. “Again, Again, Again (The Crux)” is a “Tonight, Tonight” type declaration of longing. Gish-era light grunge rears its head on “Pox.” And “Sunkissed” returns to the dreamland of tracks like “Thirty-Three” or even “Galapagos.” In short, this little collection is nothing new from Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, which is precisely why it isn’t a shrieking horror. It’s natural. It’s Billy Corgan music that sounds like Billy Corgan.
What is irritating about trying to follow Billy Corgan’s career is how frequently he defeats himself, how often he ignores what he does well to do something shallowly “Artistic.” He and Chamberlin could easily record album-after-inviting-album of expertly-recorded folky psychedelia. They could build themselves a nice catalogue of well-respected songs. Instead, Corgan persists in the self-serious boy-in-a-dress adolescent shenanigans that had grown tiresome back in 1995. Almost as irritating is that Corgan cannot be entirely written off because he is occasionally releases quite beautiful and/or exciting. If only he’d ditch the games and just be himself — even if that self is a 40-something bald, religiously-minded Midwestern singer/songwriter who used to be a rockstar.
I hope I die before I become Pete Townshend, indeed.
