:: Smashing Pumpkins - Tarantula

Smashing Pumpkins

How do you revive a flagging solo career? Well, you could either write some decent songs, or do as Billy Corgan has done and switch to trading under the old and well-recognised brand name. As we all surely know by now, this is Pumpkins in name only as the only original member Corgan could lure back on board was erstwhile junkie skin-thumper Jimmy Chamberlin. Then again, it’s debatable whether the Pumpkins were anything other than Corgan’s backing band. On Tarantula we have Corgan’s trademark whining sneer and the usual incendiary soloing, over a lumpen metal-by-numbers riff-fest. This is by no means awful, just rather dull and dated, and if this is the best he can come up with it does not bode well for the new album. For diehard Corgan disciples only.