This week I will be reviewing the second album by the 90s alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins. This album isn’t my favorite by the band, although it is perceived by fans to be their best. The album, Siamese Dream, was released in July of 1993 and debuted at number 1 on the Billboard eventually selling 6 million albums. This album contains four singles which are by itself amazing songs: Today, Cherub Rock, Disarm, and Rocket. While Siamese Dream is generally labeled under as Alternative, it fuses several different forms of music together like grunge, progressive rock, alternative metal, but also more diverse styles like dream pop (shoegaze) at certain times in the album. As the stories say, the recording for this album was painful as a band, with Billy Corgan becoming the neat freak and perfectionist wanting everything to sound like his vision. Often Billy overdubbing both bass and lead guitar parts just so songs could be completed faster. After many other issues, the album would eventually be out and last year was its 25th anniversary. On a more personal note, when I saw the Smashing Pumpkins back in August of last year, they played several songs of this album, 7 according to my memory (and setlist.fm). The first song on the album is one of their best, Cherub Rock, almost arena rock sounding with its pounding guitars and drums and its thunderous solo, with its bombastic lyrics, its one of the best album openers, instant Smashing Pumpkins classic! The next song, Quiet, is very ironically one of the loudest songs on the album with a guitar slide at the beginning but also showing a bit of the shoegaze feel with the guitar reverb and the different effects displayed on the guitar, it also displays one of the heavier sides of the band with its crunchier side to it. The next song is a much more straight up Smashing Pumpkins song, but its very more toned down than the last one, another 90s classic, Today. One of my favorite Smashing Pumpkins songs with its upbeat, quiet verses and loud choruses represent a very grungy aspect to the very lyrically dark and depressing song about suicide. The next song on the album, Hummer opens with a very shoegaze feel to it, with again great booming guitars and drums, with another awesome solo, while it is not a filler track but it is kind of just kind of one of the less memorable tracks for me personally. The next song, Rocket is one of my favorites on the album, with just an amazing guitar tone introduction and a massive buildup at the end, like a rocket launching, again amazing song. The next song is a huge departure for the band, Disarm, one of the first songs to feature an acoustic guitar, and a whole strings arrangement, showing the band has less of a grunge feel and more of an alternative band feel, more shoegaze. The next song is also a little bit of a non-rocker, Soma for about 4 and a half minutes, there is no heavy guitar and drums and just a very shoegaze feel. The next song, Geek USA is one of the heaviest Pumpkins song with an insane drum introduction with an extremely heavy guitar, straight up 4 minutes of heavy guitars and just amazing softer bridge section building up into another fast solo. The next song is also a huge departure for the band, Mayonaise, and yes it is purposefully spelled with one n for some reason. The intro and outro guitar duo is iconic, the lyrics, while don’t make sense all together make sense line by line, telling its own story, again one of my favorites Smashing Pumpkins songs, period. The next song is very different, featuring Billy Corgan and an acoustic guitar for most of it, building up into a softer part of the song with a simpler drum line and a string ensemble in it, much like one of the massive singles, Disarm. Silverf#ck, is just an amazing back half album song with heavily produced guitars and fuzz, with lots of ringed out guitar tones, it is also the longest song on the album. And so we go from the longest song on the album to the shortest, Sweet Sweet, featuring just Billy Corgan on either a clean electric guitar or an acoustic with some ring on it. The last song on the album, Luna, also features the lesser banger, moving into more of the shoegaze direction with the clean guitar, bass and guitar, a softer way to finish off a very heavier front part of the album. Overall, this album is still ana amazing work of art with every song being amazing, no skippable and no bad songs! Even the singles on the album aren’t too overplayed because they are still amazing songs, even maybe better than some of the other songs!
8/10
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Cameron E. Narimanian
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April 2020
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