About

With each Smashing Pumpkins album, singer, guitarist and producer Billy Corgan has raised the bar for his grandiose ambition: to create the defining coming-of-age music for his generation. Gish (1991) packed a neopsychedelic arena wallop into its modest pseudoindie framework; Siamese Dream (1993) heralded the return of the multitracked guitar opus, a Boston album for the alternative nation; and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) spread its farewell-to-youth concept over two rock-opera-length CDs.

Corgan and company build their mood pieces out of the sparest elements: a Soft Cell-style drumbeat on “Tear,” a handful of piano chords on “Annie-Dog,” the strum of an acoustic guitar on “The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete.” The electric-guitar bombardment that was once central to the Pumpkins’ sound has been muted; the sole six-string showcase is a long, liquid solo on “For Martha.”

In some ways, the album’s more confiding tone can be viewed as a response to the departure of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, whose splashy, storm-trooping way with a backbeat helped turn the Pumpkins into the altrock version of a fabulously overwrought muscle car. For Adore, the band called in a variety of percussionists, but they’re allowed little more latitude than the drum machines. Instead of building towering highway anthems, the Pumpkins keep the songs only several steps removed from bedroom demos.

The shift in tone is as refreshing as it is unexpected. Corgan sounds more vulnerable than ever, his voice cracking with weariness on “Annie-Dog” and embracing a heavy-lidded sensuality on “Shame” and a desperate, heart-breaking optimism on “To Sheila.” His music strives to preserve the beauty of that innocence, while his lyrics acknowledge its inevitable corrosion.

With the closing seventeen seconds of solo piano music, Corgan amplifies that theme in even more compact fashion, this time without any words at all. Just as the lovely melody begins to lift off, it ends abruptly, as if Corgan is reminding his listeners that nothing should be taken for granted. Least of all his band. — (via Rolling Stone)

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Label: Virgin
Format: 2x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
Country: Worldwide
Reissued: 2023 / Original Release: Jun 1, 1998
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock
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File under: School Of Rock