Episode 1: The Smashing Pumpkins - 'Zeitgeist'



Welcome.

I've wanted to do a regular column, focused on album reviewing, for a while. A few ideas came and went through my head, but one didn't stick in my head until now. Then I started reading Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" series, in which he reviews #1 songs from the Billboard starting at the chart's inception every day ("The Number Ones" is a self-proclaimed rip-off of Tom Ewing's "Popular" series).

I decided I'd do my own riff on that kind of series, focusing on albums instead of songs and going weekly instead of daily. I decided I would focus on Billboard's Alternative Albums chart, which began in the summer of 2007. This chart was perfect for two reasons.

One, there's a good amount of variety in the history of the chart. It's not just "alternative rock," but there's plenty of stuff from the realms of metal, punk, folk, and there's even some hip-hop and straight up pop thrown in there. It allows for an exploration of many of the biggest album sellers in the past decade, but not necessarily the biggest album of a particular moment.

Two, the chart's beginning coincides more or less with the time when I got into "alternative" music myself. 2007 was the year I really stopped just listening to what my parents liked and discovered more recent music. I thought that connection was neat, so I went for it. Let's get started.

Note: Before my own reviews I will be listing ratings from various sites. Metacritic will be used to represent critic reception of each album, though not every album has had reviews aggregated by the site (especially older albums). To gauge audience reception, I will take average scores from both RateYourMusic and Sputnikmusic. I'm using both because while RYM generally has more users and thus more ratings for each project, Sputnik tends to be less biased against some of the more maligned genres we'll tackle (such as nu metal, pop punk, post-grunge, etc.). So I thought having two sets of opinions in regards to general audience would be nice for getting some differing viewpoints. I'll also state how that average rating compares to the rest of each band's catalog on those sites. My own rating and ranking of the band's catalog will come at the end of the review.

The Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist (Relapse Records, 2007)


Genres: Alternative Rock, Hard Rock
Producer(s): Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain, Terry Date, Roy Thomas Baker
Metacritic Score: 59/100
RYM Rating: 2.60/5 (2,916 ratings, album ranked 9/9 of band's catalog)
Sputnik Rating: 2.7/5 (1,060 ratings, album ranked 9/9 of band's catalog)
Weeks at #1: One (Week of July 28, 2007)

While The Smashing Pumpkins spent the 90s as one of the most prominent alternative rock bands of the time, their first run didn't exactly end on the highest note. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain's issues with addiction kept him out of the recording of the band's divisive 1998 album Adore. He came back, but bassist D'arcy Wretzky left the band during the recording of the two Machina albums that would be released in 2000. Neither of the Machina records was particularly popular or well-received, and the band was soon no more.

Frontman Billy Corgan's first post-Pumpkins project Zwan didn't fare much better than the Machina albums. After Zwan was dissolved, Corgan mostly spent his time being a pompous curmudgeon and sniping at the likes of Wretzky and guitarist James Iha, blaming them for the band's demise. In 2005 he finally decided to re-form The Smashing Pumpkins, and production of Zeitgeist began thereafter. Chamberlain would return to the Pumpkins with Corgan, but Wretzky, Iha and Machina bassist Melissa Auf der Maur would not come back for this go-around.

Zeitgeist is an Anti-Bush Record™. Since it was released in 2007, it would be one of the last notable Anti-Bush Records™, and it would fail to resonate with people or ruffle feathers in the same way that stuff by Green Day and the Dixie Chicks did. But golly, did Corgan try. Halfway through the album, there's a ten-minute odyssey called "United States" where Corgan repeatedly calls for a revolution. He somehow made something less subtle than Green Day releasing an album called American Idiot. Through much of the album, there's less of the angst that defined the band's earlier releases and more straight-up anger.

That anger is extremely evident in the sound of the album, which is decidedly heavier than the Pumpkins' previous material. On albums like Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Corgan and co. perfected a sound somewhere between shoegaze music and grunge, with the balance between quiet and loud being crucial to the records. Corgan would go between whispers and screams at the drop of a dime while surrounded by walls and walls of guitars.

There's less of that "quiet-and-loud" balance on Zeitgeist. It's largely just loud. Earlier Smashing Pumpkins could get quite heavy -- "Zero" and "Silverf**k" come to mind. It's just that there isn't anything to counteract it. What made the band great was that balance, and it's nowhere to be found. It's especially unfortunate because if things were a little quieter the poor mixing of the project maybe wouldn't be as evident here.

The one thought that kept running through my mind while listening to Zeitgeist for the first time in probably a decade was, "Thank God Jimmy was back for this." Chamberlain's drumming is largely what keeps this album afloat. The recording was done all live-to-tape, with no editing as far as I'm aware. That makes "United States" impressive from at least one standpoint since Chamberlain had to do that all in one take. Everything else lacks much character. "Bleeding the Orchid" and "Tarantula" are solid tunes with some catchy moments but nothing that captures the ears like anything from the band's first four albums.

The Smashing Pumpkins as "old man yells about politics" just doesn't suit the project. Corgan's much better as a moody dreamer than an angry faux-revolutionary, and his ego looms large here. The Smashing Pumpkins was always the Billy Corgan Show. Iha and Wretzky's contributions to the actual recording of albums is debatable, especially as the band went on. Even considering that, their presences are missed. Corgan has no real band backing him. The harmonies here are Corgan's own voice layered on top of each other. This album is him saying, "I don't need you. I am The Smashing Pumpkins. I always was." Except Zeitgeist ends up proving the opposite. It could've used more voices, more variety, more... anything.

The albums that have come since aren't much different. They're less political and Corgan's songwriting is better in general there than they are here, but they're also missing Chamberlain badly. They're basically Billy Corgan solo albums, but if Corgan's name was on the cover it wouldn't sell as well (which has perhaps been proven by his solo album last year, Ogilala, an album I will already have forgotten by the end of this sentence). As a musician, Corgan's been clinging to relevancy for a while, and The Smashing Pumpkins' second run has been an attempt to recapture those heights. Unfortunately for Corgan, he's largely been trying to recapture a feeling by himself that was initially achieved as a band, even if he was always pulling the strings. Maybe he'll finally get there now that he's reunited with Chamberlain and even Iha again (Wretzky is still not involved, and she may or may not be invited).

Rating: 4/10

Chris' Official Smashing Pumpkins Ranking:
1. Siamese Dream (1993)
2. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)
3. Adore (1998)
4. Gish (1991)
5. Oceania (2012)
6. Machina/The Machines of God (2000)
7. Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music (2000)
8. Monuments to an Elegy (2014)
9. Zeitgeist (2007)

Next Week: Things get "Bubbly" with Colbie Caillat's Coco

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