The Smashing Pumpkins - Oceania

If you were to travel back to 1993 and tell the 12-year-old me that nearly twenty years later, I would be placed in a position where I’m being asked to publicly state my opinion on a new Smashing Pumpkins record… I would tell you that you’re crazy. Then I would put my headphones back on, press play on my Walkman so that I could go on listening to Siamese Dream and skate away. You see, the Pumpkins are one of those bands that I latched on to quite firmly in my formative years. Along with the likes of Helmet, Soundgarden and Nirvana… they were one of the most important groups of musicians to me at that time and really helped shape me into who I am today through music and art. For that I am immensely grateful to them and it is an honor to be able to provide my judgment of their work, no matter how far removed this new material may be from those records that I loved all those years ago.

That’s the thing though… their newest release, Oceania, isn’t that far removed from those classic records at all. There are songs here that subtly harken back to their dark post-gothic grunge days of Gish, through heavy use of mood and emotion. Just as that is the case there are tracks that will remind you that this is the same band that wrote Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, arguably two of the greatest alternative rock masterpieces ever conceived. After these releases, the band went in a different direction. They heavy handedly incorporated elements of electronic instrumentation into their songs on such albums as Adore and Machina. It was around that time that I had begun to lose interest in what they were doing and moved on (although in recent years, I have revisited these records and found them to be far better than I found them to be in my closed-minded youth). This electronic-leaning era of the Pumpkins is also represented on Oceania, however in a capacity that is layered in with their trademark sound that seems to have been reborn on this release.

It is no secret that the Smashing Pumpkins career has been often marred with criticism over their inability to hold a lineup together, but that is something that never really bothered me. This has always been Billy Corgan’s show and the players around him, while obviously influential on the performance, were secondary characters in the songwriting process itself. Corgan is a master craftsman of song and the body of work that the Pumpkins have amassed in the roughly 25 years of existence is undeniable proof of that. In a time when most of our rock music comes in safe and easily digestible capsules, Oceania is a testament to when bands would take risks and I think we needed this record more than we realize.

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