The Smashing Pumpkins latest album, Shiny and Oh So Bright Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. (phew), quickly became my favorite rock album of 2018. For a longtime fan of any band, the announcement of a new album 30 years after the band’s formation comes with as much anxiety as excitement. “Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck!” I followed the news about the new Smashing Pumpkins with much anticipation, particularly because along with frontman and mastermind Billy Corgan, it also included recently reunited guitarist, James Iha, along with drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and longtime Pumpkin guitarist Jeff Schroeder. It was the blending of eras, something that would make any fan a little nervous.
The first single, “Solara”, was released back in June and pointed to the heavier side of the Pumpkins catalog, but when the full album was released, a different story emerged. The opening track, “Knights of Malta”, is a theatrical sound that I haven’t heard previously from the band including soulful female backup vocals over progressive rock riffs that conjures hints of Pink Floyd. The album then weaves back and forth between 1979esque pop-rock goodness on tracks like “Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)” and “Travels” and the heavier side of the Pumpkins sound on “Solara” and “Marchin’ On”. While the album never mellows to ballad level softness, the genre spectrum on this eight-song collection is fairly wide, something that I’ve come to expect from the Pumpkins, and any other Billy Corgan project.
Regardless of his hard-to-understand politics and bizarre obsession with professional wrestling, there has never been a musician whose work has consistently resonated with me time and again like Corgan. From the first time I heard Gish in the basement of a fraternity house in 1992, to the first time I saw the Pumpkins live in the spring of 1994, to Billy’s 2017 solo show at The Grand in Wilmington, DE, to an incredible Pumpkins performance at Wells Fargo Center in Philly last summer, I have had a deep connection with all of his musical output. And now I can breathe a sigh of relief as Shiny and Oh So Bright is a concise and high-quality demonstration of what this latest configuration of the band is capable of. It’s an exciting peek into the future. I’m ready for Vol. 2.