Galactic Empire, The Smashing Pumpkins, Stephen Cummings: New album reviews

The Mos Eisley Cantina Band this ain’t as star warriors put their pedal to the metal PLUS The Smashing Pumpkins and Stephen Cummings.

Galactic Empire

This week’s album reviews from The Courier-Mail (ratings out of five stars)...

METAL

Galactic Empire, Special Edition

(Pure Noise) ***

In the ’70s it was Meco’s disco version. Now, with Star Wars still a, uh, force to be reckoned with nearly five decades on… And Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes were never like this – Galactic Empire look, and sound, more like the Knights of Ren. Just in time for Revenge of the Fifth (the day after May the Fourth), the US metal heads dropped this, their third album. Opening with the 20th Century Fox fanfare and unmistakeable Star Wars theme, it’s an aural feast for fans young and old, with selections from all three Skywalker Saga trilogies as well as recent Disney+ streaming series. In closing, Galactic Empire do the impossible and give the Ewok Victory Celebration some teeth. It’s an album with crossover appeal for metal and Star Wars fans alike.

ROCK

The Smashing Pumpkins, ATUM

(Cooking Vinyl) ***1/2

In the wake of their Australian tour these ’90s icons have unleashed the final instalment of their 28-year trilogy that began with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and continued with Machina/Machine of God. And appropriately it weighs in at a sprawling 33 tracks. The instrumental title track opens proceedings with the bombast you’d expect, though maybe sounding more ’80s hair metal than ’90s indie rock. And the ‘’80s feels don’t end there, with synth-heavy tracks like Embracer (“It’s only the lonely who lose”), Hooligan and To the Grays. And amid it all are Billy Corgan’s unmistakeable vocals, untarnished by the decades. They get spacey on Where Rain Must Fall (“On a starway to the stars”) and Sojourner with its references to Deus Ex Machine and palindromes. Then there’s the bright, bouncy Every Morning. And The Gold Mask with its Flock of Seagulls keyboard and reverb is an affirmation of life: “To trust every day stay unchanged/To be free and just be.”

ALTERNATIVE

Stephen Cummings, A Hundred Years From Now

(Cheersquad) ***

The Sports frontman turned solo artist, who has recently battled a stroke, is nothing if not aware of his own mortality – if the title of his latest album didn’t make it obvious enough. “One hundred years from now I won’t be crying, I won’t be blue/But I’ll still be thinking of you,” he sings on the twangy What a Silly Thing, the song that gives the album its name. “The great advantage of being alive is the experience of time.” Yes, he’s waxing existential, as further evidenced on Carry Your Heart: “Every moment is a golden one for him that has the vision to recognise it as such (not very much).” Cummings is sounding ragged and world-weary, much of it not only spoken but enunciated for effect. Anxiety Attack is incongruously chillaxed, while Cummings takes a dreamlike, ambient turn with Stretched Out.