The Smashing Pumpkins concert review: band retains its hard-rocking edge on Australian tour
Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins circa 2023 are retaking their hard-earned reputation as one of the world’s great live rock bands.
Nostalgia can be a real trap for performing artists, Elton John once noted, as they are tasked with navigating the notion of reprising past glories to satisfy fans while attempting to sate themselves by playing newer material. There’s no correct way to walk that tightrope, and tactics vary.
Some tours are sold as entire play-throughs of popular albums, with the setlist baked into the marketing, like U2’s decision to perform The Joshua Tree in full a few years back.
Bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers prefer to approach each night anew, switching up the song choices between shows and shrugging at the possibility of disappointing fans who wanted to hear their biggest hits on any given night.
Late last year, Guns N’ Roses chose another path by opting to overwhelm audiences with mammoth three-hour-long sets that reached deep into their catalogue.
For Chicago-born alternative rock act The Smashing Pumpkins, part of the attraction of showing up is sheer curiosity. With a deep discography comprising hundreds of tracks and a well-documented history of inflammatory interpersonal drama, what will this great band elect to play?
Having achieved lofty commercial heights through a pair of influential albums in Siamese Dream (1993) and double-album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995), the group continues to produce new music for a hard-core of true believers.
Like the Chili Peppers, which released 34 songs across two albums last year, the Pumpkins remain highly prolific: on its arrival in Australia, the band is weeks away from issuing ATUM, its 12th album. Pronounced “autumn”, it’s a 33-song “rock opera” with a weighty sci-fi concept that’s being released in three parts, with the final chapter to be completed in May.
In an era where pop and hip-hop acts dominate the charts, such intricately plotted work from a foundational alt-rock band is much more likely to be greeted with a whisper of enthusiasm than a roar.
Yet in Brisbane on Saturday night, at the first concert of a 10-date tour, the band gave a commanding performance which adeptly managed that tricky balance between old and new.
It was also an event that explored the rare intersection of rock ’n’ roll and professional wrestling: frontman Billy Corgan owns a wrestling company, and some of his American athletes tagged along on the trip to challenge local talent in a ring set up beside the sound desk, where the wrestlers went at it between bands while announcers called the action.
The sheer novelty of the spectacle was appreciated by the crowd; drinks in hand, it was a much more entertaining sight than the usual passage of dead air between performances, as sound and lighting levels are checked before showtime.
Later, near the end of the headline set, two of the US wrestlers reappeared while the band thrashed out a hard-rocking recent single titled Beguiled.
A buff shirtless bloke and a fit blonde woman walked out to dance and ham it up beside Corgan and his bandmates; in short order, the woman took offence at the bloke hogging the limelight, and she swiftly flipped his huge mass over her shoulder and onto the canvas, drawing cheers as the losing wrestler retreated, humiliated.
A few weeks earlier, I watched a concert by US rapper Snoop Dogg, whose stage plot contained several poles for scantily clad female dancers to ascend and circumnavigate during key songs. The wrestlers’ brief stage intrusion on Saturday night wasn’t quite as garish as Snoop’s cohort, but it says a lot about the state of the Smashing Pumpkins in 2023 that such a bizarre series of events was not merely tolerated mid-set, but encouraged.
As the sole founding member to have stuck with the band during a tumultuous 35 years since its inception, Corgan’s leadership appeared to be more like a dictatorship.
It was his way or the highway – and in time, everyone else chose the highway, leaving the head Pumpkin to form makeshift touring line-ups that never quite matched the unique chemistry of the founding four. But having mended fences, the band now comprises three of its original members in Corgan, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and guitarist James Iha.
Today, the latter pair – two distinctive musicians who are absolutely central to the band’s enveloping sound – are bolstered by a third guitarist in Jeff Schroeder, as well as bassist Jack Bates and backing vocalist/keyboardist Katie Cole.
Backed by such a powerful pack of players, it’s unsurprising that the Pumpkins circa 2023 are capable of matching it with any other rock act treading the boards globally.
The setlist on Saturday night was a statement of intent: hit singles Bullet With Butterfly Wings and Today appeared early, while toward the end, a killer trio of Cherub Rock, Zero and 1979 were played not just faithfully but proudly.
Perhaps that sense of pride was being projected by this writer – but at 56, Corgan did seem to relish performing 1979 in particular. It is a signature song, and one of the band’s calmer hits, where its hard-rock attack was sacrificed to a hypnotic drum loop and an evocative set of clean guitar chords soundtracked by lyrics and melodies that encapsulate a longing for youthful days passed.
Nostalgia can be a trap because time only marches in one direction. You can never go back, but timeless songs like this one – sung en masse by the 4000 or so fans gathered at Eatons Hill Hotel, an outdoor venue 20km northwest of the Queensland capital – help us reinforce the stories we tell ourselves about the shape of our lives.
Having spent years in the wilderness, wrestling with artistic glory followed by its sudden absence, it was a joy to watch Corgan, Chamberlin and Iha reunite on an Australian stage for the first time since 1998.
Together, this trio and their offsiders are retaking their hard-earned reputation as one of the world’s great live rock bands.
Chamberlin is a fearsome, innovative drummer who was awarded a few moments in the spotlight, during Solara and Ava Adore, but otherwise kept his head down while pummelling his kit. In the latter song, Iha’s harmonised guitar solo with Schroeder was a marvel, while Corgan stalked the stage sans instrument for a few songs, microphone in hand, looming large in a long black overcoat with a few lines of dark makeup painted on his face.
A pair of unexpected covers were played, including a take on Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime built on an extremely heavy doom-metal riff, as well as Corgan and Iha introducing a “special treat” for Australians fans by premiering an acoustic version of Under the Milky Way, The Church’s signature song. Sung by Iha, whose voice is much deeper than the band leader’s, it was a little shaky in its execution, prompting the pair to laugh it off as the crowd cheered their efforts.
Together, the acoustic duo then delivered a beautiful version of Tonight, Tonight. Stripped of its strings and percussion, the song not only retained its power and meaning, but was heightened by their absence.
Four songs from the forthcoming album ATUM were dotted throughout the set, including the debut of recent single Spellbinding, wherein Corgan’s fine ear for pop songwriting was on display. Later, the leader gave a near note-perfect rendition of his guitar solo in Cherub Rock, as the battery of lights surrounding him erupted into a flickering rainbow.
The light show was enthralling throughout the 105 minute set, which fell short of the advertised two-hour runtime, leaving plenty of confused fans as the stagehands began packing down equipment.
Without an encore, the final song performed was Silverf..k, a combustible nine-minute jam from Siamese Dream where the triple guitar attack bristled with harmonics and muscular riffing that mimicked bucking horses, while Chamberlin thundered on the toms behind them.
The amusing showbiz interlude with the wrestlers was washed away in squalls of distorted guitar noise, as Silverf..k built to a towering conclusion that left us hungry for more. Age has not wearied them, and with little left to prove at this stage in its career, the group is happily embracing its past while looking to its future.
The Smashing Pumpkins’ tour continues in Sydney on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Melbourne, Ballarat, Adelaide and Newcastle, before ending at the Gold Coast (April 30).
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