No Past, No Future, No Sun: The Sad Future of The Smashing Pumpkins

Written by James (ECA ‘24), November 11, 2020

I have a love/hate relationship with Billy Corgan, and he doesn’t even know me. He has made some of the best music that I have ever heard. I mean, “Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness”? It’s a work of art, like it or not. His aimless lyrics illustrate depressing tales such as “Stumbleine” and “XYU.” He assembled one of the greatest grunge rhythm sections of all time which included D’Arcy Wretzky, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin. 

So far I have written nothing but praise for him. Now here’s the hate part.

I was around 12 when I first saw the Smashing Pumpkins. On the Shiny and Oh So Bright tour, they had decided to come to Connecticut and play a show at Mohegan Sun. When I arrived and walked into the lobby, everything was Billy Corgan. His face was on the tour artwork, shirt artwork. I think I saw his face on a coaster. His ego dominated the set, leaving me with a sour memory of his band live. However, that did not stop me from buying his albums in various formats and going to another show. 

The fact that he still thinks that the Smashing Pumpkins are still culturally relevant amuses me. The band hasn’t released anything good within the last decade. I mean c’mon, 140 bucks for the deluxe edition of an album that won’t even be that good? The Smashing Pumpkins, in my mind, are washed up. Of course, I could be wrong: only a few songs from side one of the upcoming album “Cyr,” have been released.

So why am I writing this article if I hate Billy Corgan so much? They have a new album coming out sometime within the next two months. The upcoming material is a follow-up to the reunion album called Shiny and Oh So Bright Volume 1: No Past, No Future, No Sun. This album was mixed and engineered by Rick Rubin. It was painful, to say the least, listening to a 52-year old Corgan (he’s 53 now) snarling over half-decent instrumentals. Of course, it’s his style to whine/snarl over emotional instruments.

However, I am hopeful. In my opinion, the song “The Colour of Love” was some of the best work the band has put out since 2007. It surrounded Corgan’s elder vocals with BEAUTIFUL background vocals. If you are a fan of New Order, you might like this track. The very, very catchy song has me hopeful for the rest of the album. Corgan also wrote cartoons to correspond with the new tracks. I watched the first two recently. The first one was good, so I was looking forward to the rest of the series. However, the second one made me cringe. I recommend not watching it, but if you want to know why, have at it. It’s more money in Corgan’s pocket anyway. Maybe the album will be up there with early Smashing Pumpkins material like Siamese Dream or Machina, but the material that has been released so far has been PAINFULLY electronic.

That last sentence makes me sound hypocritical. My third favorite Smashing Pumpkins album is Adore. Adore comes after Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, and it is an electronic album. After the death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin due to a drug overdose while hanging out with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, Chamberlin was removed from the band. He was replaced in various ways, with Joey Waronker from Beck’s band, Matt Cameron of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, and, in some cases, by a drum machine. 

Adore deals with Corgan’s mother’s death. I like more electronic Smashing Pumpkins material, including new songs like “Confessions from a Dopamine Addict” and “Cyr,” but they feel simplistic. They simply lack something that The Smashing Pumpkins’ early stuff plentily has, DEPTH.

Legend has it, on Siamese Dream, Corgan tracked the Big Muff-dominated guitars over 20 times and recorded secondary guitars and bass himself. He made Jimmy Chamberlin redo his drum parts many times. However, this attention to detail and process is something their new music simply lacks. You can barely hear guitars on any song other than “Wyttch,” which might be the best song so far from the project. 

Maybe it’s how Corgan’s musical output has aged with criticism and success. He broke up the Smashing Pumpkins in 2000, reunited without D’Arcy or James Iha in 2007, lost Chamberlin soon after, and now has James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin, a new guy named Jeff Schroder, and Peter Hook’s son on bass. Some say the band’s ability to put good music out was simply lost whenever D’Arcy left the band. I don’t believe that, and I believe that success just went straight to Corgan’s head.

At the end of the day, I am looking forward to this new album, and I was planning on pre-ordering it. Of course, there are more valuable pre-orders for the finale of 2020. If you want to preorder the new Smashing Pumpkins album on vinyl, it’s 38 bucks. You can get way more bang for your buck with a White Stripes greatest hits album which releases on December 4th for $30 or the latest chapter of a political rock opera from the Drive-By Truckers called “The New OK” for $24.

For more information on the latest Smashing Pumpkins album, go here

To listen to the new singles from The Smashing Pumpkins, click on the corresponding links:

Wrath 

Cyr

Confessions of A Dopamine Addict

The Colour of Love

Vacationing In Obscurity: A Semisonic Retrospect And Review Of You’re Not Alone

Written by Nick Kovacs (ECA ‘21), September 30, 2020

The tail end of the nineties was quite a rush to say the least. It almost felt like the decade was trying to say “sorry” for all of the dourness and heavy themes that came with the end of hair metal, and the birth and eventual, extremely sudden implosion of grunge. Although its time was brief, bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and many more completely marked the nineties as the “decade of grunge,” a time in music where the flashiness and glamour of hair metal and MTV had worn off and people were ready to appreciate good, down-to-earth music again. But just as suddenly as the grunge phenomena swept the nation in mid-1991, it fell as hard with the death of Kurt Cobain, the hiatus of Alice In Chains, and the eventual demise of Soundgarden in 1995-96. But to counteract all of the confused and lost Gen-X’ers left without a genre to call home, the mid-to-late nineties ditched the contemplation and dark themes, and helped launch a smorgasbord of happy-go-lucky, utterly chipper rock and pop music. This was the era of pop-punk, ska, alt rock, adult alternative, britpop, funk rock: basically anything that you didn’t need to think all too hard about, but still had its own merit to it that you could respect.

In other words, in this desperate period to fill the gap of grunge, a lot of bands with little staying power quickly went in and out of the Top 40 like wildfire. Like the early eighties, the late nineties were absolutely filled to the brim with flashes in the pan, little blips on the Billboard Charts, or to put it simply, one-hit wonders. 

New Radicals, Blind Melon, 4 Non Blondes, Len, Chumbawamba, Butthole Surfers (yes that was a real band that made it to the Top 40 in 1996), it was a never ending wave of anything and everything. But nestled somewhere in between all those replays of Marcy Playground and Deep Blue Something, there was Semisonic.

Consisting of Dan Wilson on vocals/guitars, John Munson on bass, and Jacob Slichter on drums, Semisonic are an alternative rock/power pop group founded in 1995 and are based out of Minneapolis. They have released three albums, two EPs, one live album, and over ten singles in their short career. However, out of everything they accomplished as a band, only one moment caught the attention of the masses: that being the enduring late-nineties classic, “Closing Time.”

Just those two words might have brought to mind memories of a pretty and simple piano intro with refrains of how every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. It wasn’t the biggest hit at the time, just reaching #8 on the Top 40 in the summer of 1998, but this song has only gained more love and attention in the years since, with constant mentions in television and media, multiple covers by other artists, and thousands upon thousands of bars across the globe blasting this song to drive all the bar rats out at 1 in the morning for two solid decades. And yet, if you walk up to someone on the street and ask them to name another one of their tunes, chances are they couldn’t tell you; that’s the pain of being a one-hit wonder. It’s kind of baffling to think about though, a band that has only gotten more love and attention since their initial explosion onto the pop scene, and yet they still only have one song in the public consciousness.

However, as a self-proclaimed fan of Semisonic, being the owner of two signed CDs and a special edition colored vinyl, I can not only confirm that Semisonic were a band that deserved more attention to further expand their sound, but I wholeheartedly believe they were never going to get that chance. I believe that they deserved more, but I knew that they weren’t going to get it after “Closing Time.”

To put it bluntly, no band could’ve made a career out of their first hit being “Closing Time,” it’s just too much of (and I’m putting it as nicely as I can) a novelty. A song about the last call at a bar filled to the brim with cliche lines that bartenders announce at the end of the night and a couple of poetic lines sprinkled here and there was never going to let the guys escape this weird idea that turned into an inexplicable hit. It was an unheard-of idea that people quickly latched onto, but once the four chord song wore off, so did the novelty, leaving little staying power for the band itself to reap the rewards of. It’s a reason a lot of artists and bands become one-hit wonders in the first place; the one single creates an identity that the band can never escape because the song comes off as so sincere, yet so odd, and possibly so dated, that it ruins the public image of the band. It’s the same story as “Turning Japanese” by The Vapors, it’s the same story as “Mexican Radio” by Wall Of Voodoo, and it’s definitely the same story as “She Blinded Me With Science” by Thomas Dolby, all legitimate acts that had the unfortunate fate of having their big hit single be a joke. This rings especially true if you’re a rock band, even if you're a band that has only one or no hits: you can still earn tons of underground notoriety that prevents you from the one-hit wonder status because rock is an album genre. That’s why if you tell a Modest Mouse fan that they’re a one-hit wonder because “Float On” was their only Top 40 hit, you probably shouldn’t be surprised if you walk away from the conversation with a black eye. In the long run, Semisonic weren’t able to score that underground credibility to keep them around as at least critical darlings. 

But as of Friday, September 18, 2020, Semisonic left the studios with a project hoping to reset that image for themselves. 

After a 2001 flop (All About Chemistry), the band took a 20 year hiatus. Spin off bands, teaching careers, & memoirs on being a one-hit wonder filled the decades. Dan Wilson became a notable figure behind the production desk as a songwriter. You may have heard of a little song in the mid-2010’s by the name of “Someone Like You” performed by Adele. That’s right, he helped write that Grammy Award winning song, as well as a few other songs on that album. He’s also done work with notable artists Weezer, Spoon, The Chicks, My Morning Jacket, Missy Higgins, Pink, John Legend, and even Taylor Swift.

Recently the band felt the songwriting itch once more, returning to the studios in mid-2019 to pump out a new release for fans, such as myself, that have been chomping for new material for decades now, that being the newly released 2020 EP You’re Not Alone.

Spanning five tracks with two singles released thus far, You're Not Alone was obviously not made to include a major hit like “Closing Time.” Ultimately it seems the main goal of this release is to act as fan service; a nice thank you to the avid listeners that have been there from either day one, or since they first hit the mainstream over 20 years ago. Many fans didn’t even think this EP would happen, but they got the surprise of a lifetime when the first single was quietly released on June 26, 2020. Starting with a soft, clean guitar intro, and dynamics building throughout the verses, Wilson sings of songwriters making sense of the declining state of the world the only way they can, by writing about it through music. The song explodes with a wall of electric guitars and cymbal crashes. Wilson almost screams about how the music industry is unforgiving, but there will always be people out there looking after you, hitting falsettos on refrains of “you’re not alone.”

There’s definitely a lot of self-reflection spanned across this EP. But to be fair, there was probably no way that it wasn’t going to seep in just a bit, even if unintentionally. Almost every song on the EP is reminiscent, either of their glory days, or just playing as a band in general without the pressures of major labels and constant touring. Some of the more reflective moments peak out on songs like “Lightning” or “Basement Tapes,” the former containing a clever line in the chorus pretty clearly hinting at their past success. “Am I asking for too much for lightning to strike me / Strike me a second time,” referring to their eventual one-hit wonder status. In “Basement Tapes” Wilson tells stories of Semisonic tours through the USA leading up to when they broke out, sleeping on sofas and getting lost in pre-Google Maps era of road trips. 

Semisonic has always stood out with a form of vulnerability they put into whatever they make. A lot of their lyrics deal with personal and social issues, being outsiders for most of their lives, and looking for genuine connections with others. That heartfelt attitude is no different here. Their sincerity is the main reason I got into this band in the first place. Rather than coming off as underwhelming or condescending like other bands do, Semisonic expresses a vulnerability that has only aged like fine wine. 

You’re Not Alone brings to the table a nice helping of great guitar work, catchy choruses, immaculate production and mixing elements, and a straightforward thank you to all of their fans.  Who wouldn’t like something like that?

If you’re at all curious in checking these guys out, listen to their most popular album, Feeling Strangely Fine, with the crushing acoustic ballad “Gone To the Movies,” the fun and buoyant second single “Singing In My Sleep,” the upbeat piano driven “Never You Mind,” and the keyboard slow jam “Secret Smile.” If you like what you hear on that project, feel free to save their newest EP on any streaming service and support a band that got caught up in the happy-go-lucky nineties, yet deserved so much more credit in the long run for contributing to the true sound of such a carefree decade.

Listen to Semisonic on Youtube here.