Русский форум SMASHING PUMPKINS

цитата:

Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot reviews new Smashing Pumpkins EP

11:42 am // Friday, May 21, 2010

In today’s installment of “Turn It Up,” Greg Kot tackles the new Smashing Pumpkins EP, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope 1: Songs for a Sailor for the Chicago Tribune.

He awards the release 2.5 stars of 4, doling out praise to Billy Corgan and company:

By this point, Billy Corgan has so polarized his fan base that it’s impossible to discuss his music without phrases like “ego run amok” and “raging control freak” getting in the way.

But though he now remains the sole remaining original member of the band he founded in Chicago in the late ‘80s, Corgan is a long way from phoning it in as a recording artist. Last year he announced plans to record a 44-song album, which he would unveil a song at a time on the Internet. Each group of four songs would be repackaged as a physical EP, of which “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope 1: Songs for a Sailor” (Rocket Science) is the first.

This is the first batch of recordings Corgan has done since longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin left the band in early 2009. He was the one true foil in Corgan’s career, a musician capable of ferocity and nuance in equal measure, and a large enough personality to impact how Corgan shaped the music.

The musicians surrounding Corgan are now all relatively anonymous; their role seems largely to color the arrangements in what are essentially fleshed-out Corgan solo tracks. Without Chamberlin’s freight train roaring behind him, the hurtling “Astral Planes” never quite achieves liftoff. And one can only imagine how Chamberlin might’ve combusted the six-minute “Song for a Son,” which sounds like a promising sketch for a “Stairway to Heaven”-style epic.

Corgan’s at his best when he takes a lighter tack and develops two of his more engaging melodies on the remaining tracks. Ascending guitar lines give “Widow Wake My Mind” a soaring insistence and “Stitch in Time,” with its rich acoustic layers and chiming percussion, is all incense and peppermints. For those fans who haven’t yet written off Corgan, it’s enough to keep them listening for the next “Teargarden” installment.

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2010/05/review-smashing-pumpkins-teargarden-by-kaleidyscope-1-songs-for-a-sailor.html