(immediate thoughts about The Smashing Pumpkins' new album, Aghori Mhori Mei)
by Annie Fish.
Billy Corgan takes his craft seriously, this much we have always known. This was what people made fun of him for in the 90s, and they never really stopped. Everyone took their work seriously, sure (okay maybe not the Chili Peppers), but they also spent the time clowning around. Billy always came off as extremely pretentious just because he never clowned. James clowned, D’Arcy clowned; Billy stayed stoic. Yes, his band was a language pun. Yes, their double album was as well. But the actual tunes were carved from marble, and it took his entire self to do it.
It was just coincidence that for the first six years of his career, people were on the same wavelength as him, and it shouldn’t have been surprising that they eventually left that level. The problem for him was that he grew a need for love, for validation. He knew he was working hard and delivering the goods, and when people’s taste turned away, he got angry. He got bitter. He blamed everyone but himself for why the band started failing— yet what even was that failure? Yes, adore sold 2 million instead of 17 million, but that’s still 2 fucking million copies, for a dark album about grief. To be a true artist, I think, you’ve got to understand that not all of your art is going to be for everyone, but also know you’ve got to make it anyways. But Billy Corgan could never accept that. He had to not only follow his heart, but everyone else had to follow him, too. When they stopped, he doubled down on the “overlord” persona the press had given him in 1993.
So he broke up the Smashing Pumpkins because “the Boy Bands won,” starting talking shit on James and D’Arcy, started Zwan, got mad when it wasn’t big enough, broke up Zwan, started talking shit on Pajo and Sweeney. Made a solo album, and reformed the Smashing Pumpkins when everyone said it was bad. But that new version of the Pumpkins was a funhouse mirror version of “what people wanted.” Zeitgeist “rocked,” but it rocked too hard (it stole St. Anger’s snare tone, which in hindsight feels like an incredible joke), it was prickly and uninviting. The Shepard Fairey art was too on-the-nose for the late Bush era (the statue of liberty sinking into the sea… get it!?) A single’s art had a photo taken of Paris Hilton surrounded by grim reapers, holding a cell phone, photographed off a television set.
Here’s the thing about all that, though, and especially calling an album with all that Zeitgeist: was he wrong? It was at this moment we decided he was an out of touch idiot, making fun of his Hot Topic costumes and “Lol, Politics” album art, and consigned him to the desperate has-been pile. Zeitgeist didn’t sell well, and the tour became a shit-show: angry fans who wanted him to play “Today” twelve times in a row. Looking at the setlists from 2007 is bizarre: there are more hits than not, and it should have been celebrated that he opened up the deep cut box, but people rioted. It boxed him in, and made him furious. The next year's “20th Anniversary Tour” was a performance art disaster. The shows were good, but “angry Billy” was out in full force, and he spent most of the between-song moments taking potshots at ungrateful fans, then drove the point home by playing a PInk Floyd cover for 22 minutes. Jimmy Chamberlin quit the band, and Billy said “have fun touring in a white van again.”
After this he hired a 19-year old drummer (who, it must be said, could genuinely fucking rip), and declared that the next Pumpkins album would be called Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, and come out one song at a time, online only, for free. This, in theory, was a great idea. The issue was that he was recording the songs one at a time, too. His perfectionism got in the way; the once a month promise immediately got derailed. It also didn’t help that his new love of psychedelia and synthesizers was what no fan with a platform wanted to hear.
He half-scrapped the formula and brought the touring band in to cut a real record (billed as "an album within an album"). Oceania was his best work in ten years. But since most of the reviews singled out the contributions of the other band members above him, he got mad, fired most of the band, and made the worst album of his life: Monuments to an Elegy, a slight album (also "an album within an album") made worse by the bizarre decision to hire Tommy Lee to do the drums, blasting the subtlety out of songs that were already lacking in it. Billy was the most defiant about this album, saying that he personally thought it was his best in years, that he knew it wasn’t a “three star record.” But the problem was that, well, it was exactly that, and everyone said it, and he scrapped the companion album he had promised, killing Teargarden by Kaleidyscope before it could see completion). It was around this time that he started his other much-clowned upon endeavor: improv synth jams held at his Highland Park Tea Shop. He made the mistake of live-streaming his Siddhartha performance. Oneohtrix Point Never live-tweeted his reactions from the crowd, forever sealing Billy’s love of synthesis as something else to make fun of him for.
It makes sense then, that the two albums of the early 2020s (after the decent but uninspiring, Rick Rubin-produced, comeback album SHINY AND OH SO BRIGHT VOLUME ONE NO FUTURE NO PAST NO SUN and the massive reunion (minus D’Arcy) tour of (half) the same name) would be chock-full of synths. CYR and ATUM were more or less wall to wall, with only ATUM having a handful of “rockers” over its three-disc length. None of that is actually saying the “synth-heavy” albums are bad. It’s just clearly, defiantly, obviously what no one wanted from him. “The Smashing Pumpkins Original Lineup Reunites” sounding like a million Gen-Xers siamese wet dreams, and here we were with two records in a row where Jimmy Chamberlin simply kept up with a drum machine.
Here’s the thing though: I’m writing all this history out because it proves one thing. As angry as Billy Corgan gets at the people who listen to his music, it’s obvious he never once stopped following his heart. He never gave in to expectations, and he never broke his artistic vision, even when everyone begged him to. Like it or don’t (and obviously I like the vast majority of it, but I don’t really begrudge the people it never clicked with), he was always, defiantly himself. It feels hard to be too upset at him for that. Isn’t that what an artist is supposed to do? And yet we beg him, please, stop the synths, give us one more rock and roll album.
Imagine then, my surprise, at being genuinely startled by the beginning of their new album, Aghori Mhori Mei. Jumpscared by how massive the guitar sound was. Surprised again by a guitar riff that sounded like it had come straight out of 1994. Spooked by a guitar solo with a tone that I could only describe as “nasty.” Stunned by beautiful, powerful, high-register, confident vocals. Frightened by a nearly seven minute song that sounded as much like Gentle Giant as it does Gish. Frightened, and overjoyed.
Billy Corgan took the long way around.
After 20 years, he finally figured out how to bridge the gap between self interest and outside expectation. The miracle is that this doesn’t have the sound of desperate pandering. It sounds like the natural progression, not just of the band that made ATUM, but of the band that made Gish. There’s moments that evoke nearly every moment of Billy Corgan’s career, but lacking the pretentiousness that kept people at arm’s length for so long. Sure, it’s called Aghori Mhori Mei, and has song titles like “Edin,” “Goeth the Fall,” and “Sicarus,” but how different is that from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, “Siva,” or “Silverfuck?” He started as he meant to go on, and that’s brought us his best work in 20 years.
Now, I don’t for one moment think this album will actually go over with everyone. There’s still some synths, and one song sounds like Evanescence, and the lyrics (at least at first listen) are still the one element of modern Corgan songwriting that have become too prog and purple to hold onto (outside of this line: “so i found a postcard from the cross / said hey hi how are you / the weather’s fine / if you like that kind of view,” a line that hits the sweet spot of honest corny excellence few can pull of). I can’t imagine (and sorry for this comparison) Pitchfork giving it more than a 5.6. It's not going to bring Rock and Roll back to the charts.
But if you’ve been there for the whole time? This album is the best surprise in a career that’s so full of them they often become rote. It feels both wholly new and the exact culmination of nearly 40 years of turning psychedelia into pop-leaning grunge rock. It feels like the work of a band, too, instead of just Billy Corgan alone in his toolshed, asking James Iha for a solo at the 11th hour, and Jimmy Chamberlin to play along with baby’s first drum machine. It sounds like people making music together, and putting themselves into the work. It feels made with more care and purpose than any of the last three albums did. We’re nearly six years into this lineup of the Smashing Pumpkins, but it finally feels like the reunion we’ve always dreamed of. It feels like Billy Corgan's finally found some spiritual peace in his lifelong journey.
Or, maybe there’s life yet in these machines of God.