SMASHING PUMPKINS, CYR, 2LP
Indie Exclusive Limited Edition Purple Nebula vinyl.
As with all things Smashing Pumpkins, this album will challenge you, whether a long time fan or a recent convert. I read somewhere recently (2020) that Billy Corgan and the band took up the tools that modern life had afforded them, much like Joy Division or the Sisters of Mercy and created and an album that delivers a worldly zeitgeist as much as the album Zeitgeist did in 2007. This music reflects our times, our tools, and our spiritual attitudes. The songs have a dark tone to them and are beautifully produced. The spirit of The Smashing Pumpkins is here in abundance even if the fan-favorite forms have been altered somewhat. This is the heart of The Pumpkins: stay true to oneself and expand and explore new territory, new visions, and set up new musical colonies on places like Mars and Venus.
If you’re on the fence about the purchase, I would invite you down from the fence and buy it. It rewards multiple listens and has enough depth that you can keep coming back to explore the themes of spiritual decay, dysfunction, alienation, devotion, rebellion, and yes of course love. There is hope scattered throughout this album as well but I wonder about redemption. It’s too early to tell for me. The standouts to my ears thus far are Dulcet in E, Anno Satana, Save Your Tears, Hidden Sun, and Black Forest, Black Hills. But even today as I listen and re-listen, new sounds bubble up and different songs take hold. As I wrote earlier, this album might challenge you and what you thought you knew about The Smashing Pumpkins but that’s what makes an album and a band worth listening to again and again.
$37.98
In stock