Music review: Deep waters, sonic glory, and The Smashing Pumpkins

“You know I’m not dead!” Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins, famously crooned in “The Everlasting Gaze” off 2000’s Machina LP. 

 

If you were among the lucky ones who made it to The Smashing Pumpkins’ August 8 show, through wet hell and high water, you witnessed three hours of Corgan proving he’s well and truly still among the quick.

 

The deluge-with-no-name that plunged the city into the deep floods, displaced thousands, and stranded even more, had already delayed the concert by one day. Corgan and the band had decided that enough was enough, and urged the local organizer to assist him in postponing their gig. 

 

Corgan said, in a tweet he posted at 3:16PM of August 7, notably earlier than the Araneta website or the organizer’s: "The safety of our fans is ALWAYS a huge priority. With 24 long hours delay our 1st Manila show will be at same arena, same time tomorrow!!" 

 

To which bassist Nicole Fiorentino later added, “Manila, I am thrilled that we get to play tomorrow night. My heart was breaking thinking we were leaving here without rocking out for you!”

 

By postponing the concert, they had bumped off the UAAP games indefinitely--albeit classes were already suspended on all levels. Though the skies did clear up for a bit the next day, many fans still couldn’t make it to the SMART Araneta Coliseum with parts of the metro still flooded. Chatting with fellow fans before the show, I found out a significant number had to wade through flood waters or ride makeshift boats (made of refrigerators and coffins!), to get to the venue.  

 

If you did make it though, it was an event that fulfilled Pumpkin dreams long-time coming. It was a  hard road to travel, in the same vein as Corgan’s spiritual journey where he declares that he values the voyage rather than the monetary gain at the end.

 

The Smashing Pumpkins, you see, is one of the greatest bands to come out of the alternative rock soup of the 1990s. Formed in Chicago, Illinois in 1988, they burst into the scene with a vastly different sound from their punk-worshiping contemporaries, incorporating elements of shoegaze, metal, post-punk, psychedelic rock and folding them into a guitar-driven, quiet/loud gestalt. The result was not only technically impressive but also extremely popular. 

 

They haven’t stopped since, garnering Grammy awards and a laundry list of hit albums. Tonight’s show is in support of their 2012 LP Oceania, a record themed with aquatic imagery and diving into the abyss. How apt that, of all things, it is this album that found everyone braving the floods and rain.   

 

When we filed into the patron area a little before 7 p.m., the line was long and snaking at the red gate. Waiting with cramped legs, we heard that the band was live tweeting their preparations, including bass player Fiorentino, who wanted to know which dress she should wear for tonight’s show. 

 

We were behind the barricaded VIP area, trying to relax and contain our excitement, when I spotted something on the ground near the boot of the bouncer in front of us. It was a black guitar plectrum with, as I studied it in my hands, an old, analog symbol of a zero with a slash in its middle printed in silver on one side. 

 

Shown to a friend, it was declared, “Hey cool, a heavy gauge pick!” Later, when the band started throwing picks into the audience, I found out it was one of Billy’s. 

 

Around 15 minutes before the show, the VIP area in front of us opened up on the sides and we made a run for it like the rest. We stood as close to the stage as we could, only three rows between us and the closest monitor. I quickly pocketed the pick as the lights dimmed and the band came out to deafening cheers. 

 

As promised, the Pumpkins performed the entirety of their latest LP in full. Corgan had previously said that it was a way to posit that every song in a given record has just as much relevance as the others, eschewing the day’s obsession with singles. 

 

Oceania live was, strangely enough, an awesome multi-media experience that is contemporary and sprawling and will no doubt appeal to young audiences. I say strange because, being a conceptual record that’s part of a bigger narrative, performing it in its entirety feels like a rebellious act, a commitment that scythes away the casual listener and rewards the attentive soul who wants a more meaningful musical experience. The old conceit still brims with power in the right hands.     

 

The projection globe by designer Sean Evans (who also worked on Pink Floyd’s The Wall) that hung large behind and above the band was a grand way to present visuals tailor-made for each song off the new album. They added a theatrical dynamic, much like the actual wall did for Floyd, bringing the songs to another level, spicing the lyrics and the sounds as they crested and waned. 

 

Sometimes we didn’t know whether to look at the band or zone out on the globe. It’s a territory that the post-rock bands of the nineties are familiar with, and SP have made the correct decision to take that palimpsest strategy and run with it. 

 

Of particular interest were “The Chimera,” “Glissandra,” and “Quasar,” which the new band members performed in outstanding fashion; especially young drum prodigy Mike Byrne; he gave the new line-up a groove that is both new yet still recognizably SP. I didn’t miss former bassist D’Arcy Wretzy at all with ex-Veruca Salt’s Nicole Fiorentino holding down the low end in her red dress and on-stage grace, so flowing and hypnotic it’s a wonder someone so tall can move like that. 

 

Meanwhile, Korean guitarist Jeff Schroeder is an enigma. Even if he’s playing the most difficult of passages in shred, his expression doesn’t change one bit. This makes it look like he’s not enjoying himself, in sharp contrast to his body movement that just screams a rock-out attitude. He’s a Zen blank. Or, one muses, is it the literary instructor’s way of axe slinging?

 

With the entirety of Oceania played out, the familiar, gloomy chords of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” signalled the second half of the show. They quickly swooped into the sludge rocker “XYU,” a song rarely performed live and so heavy that it hit us straight in the viscera and came back for the other vital organs. 

 

Corgan’s spiels punctuated the songs as the second half of the set got on with relish. At one point he talks about how Pinoy men are the luckiest since Pinays are so beautiful. Joking around further with Fiorentino, he says she’s just as beautiful, but a tad smarter since she’s in the band. He also chided the crowd, “Did you hear about the rains? What rains?!” 

 

Some of the old hits are faster, performed less in the old SP vein and thus sound less dated. The addition of mellotrons and Jeff Schroeder’s decidedly new school axe playing interlaces well with how the old songs are now played live. A few sections of “Disarm” and “Adore” have been deleted or entirely re-arranged. They’ve been freshly remade for the big, electric arena that defies nameless weather fronts, a great rendition on their own material. 

 

And Corgan’s voice seemed especially well honed and powerful. Gone is the nasal, sometimes grating punk whine that missed high notes seen in old Youtube clips or the Vieuphoria “Lost Tapes.” It’s been replaced by a sinewy, full-throated bellow, notably up front and in your face on “XYU,” “Zero,” and, in the anthemic manifesto of refusal of the alternative nation: “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.”

 

“On any other normal night that would be it. But this is not a normal night,” Corgan declared as the second set ended with “Today.” I was still hoping that they’d play any song from their first album, Gish, but with “1979,” “Cherub Rock” and “Muzzle” already into the encore, I was more than satiated. 

 

The night ended with a cover of Kiss’s “Black Diamond.” With Mike Byrne on drums singing, the cover was a great way to cap a night of total sonic glory. The Pumpkins not only played their hearts out, but showed us that rock gods who aim high and stay on the path of excess while sticking to their creative guns, do reach the tower of wisdom and return as avatars of their old selves.

 

And for those who couldn’t make it? Not to worry. Said Corgan in a tweet addressed to the absent Pumpkin-heads: “For all the fans who CANNOT come tonight due to the weather we will come back again soon. We have been treated so well, and we thank you.” — DVM/YA, GMA News All photos by Ike Sulat