CD of The Week

Oh Billy. That's something that I find myself saying a lot these days. Pretty much whenever Billy Corgan opens his mouth, to speak at least. He sure hasn't made it easy to be a Smashing Pumpkins fan for a long time now. Back in 2007, Billy "reformed" the band, albeit with only one other founding member - drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, and released Zeitgeist. Say what you will about that album, but it definitely had its moments ranking up there with some old Pumpkins favorites. Since that album, Billy managed to alienate Jimmy, leaving himself as the sole Pumpkin standing, but still carried on under the name that was once among the most prominent in the alternative rock world. With an able-bodied crew of musicians including holdover guitarist Jeff Schroder, as well as new recruits Nicole Fiorentino on bass, and 19 year old drum prodigy Mike Byrne, Billy embarked on a bold new project - the 44 song epic Teargarden By Kaleidyscopecollection of free downloads. Yes friends, the album format was dead. Until a year and half later (and only 12 songs intoTeargarden)when a new Pumpkins album was announced, Oceania.

Somwhere along the way of writing and releasing individual songs, Billy found himself feeling the urge to create a larger work, a cohesive group of songs, like they did in the old days. Oceaniadoes succed on that level, the songs do indeed feel like they belong to the same body of work, with a flow from one to the next, but that may be the album's biggest problem as well. Many of the songs, especially in the recor's first two thirds are too alike in their tone for me to find all that compelling. Not that this is a bad album, but even the strongest moments like "The Celestials" are less interesting than some of the Teargarden tunes. (By the way, just because that song has strings does not mean that it should be compared to the classic "Disarm.") Truth be told, and I hate to say it, I was ready to write this one off... until track 10 that is.

As soon as "The Chimera" hits, Oceaniabecomes a whole new ballgame. That song's energy carries through to the unique whining guitar of "Glissandra" (which may be a name for a future cat of mine) and the intense "Inkless." The record winds down very nicely with the beautiful synthy "Wildflower" where Fiorentino does a great job with D'Arcy-esque backing vocals and the guitar drones away like the final minutes of "Drown." I heard Billy say that these last songs, because they harken back to The Pumpkins 90's sound, almost didn't make the cut. Well thank goodness they did because they truly are the record's greatest moments.