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Oct 01, 2014 Issue #51 - September/October 2014 - alt-J By Sameer Rao

Regardless of what The Smashing Pumpkins have been up to in the past few decades—side-projects, sanctimonious public dismissals of one another, misguided attempts at keeping the band together and defending its legacy while appearing too smug to actually redeem themselves (all of which, like the band, was mainly Billy Corgan’s doing)—the music should really speak for itself. With this behemoth reissue of Adore, arguably the most misunderstood Pumpkins album from the ‘90s, they can start to do that a little bit.

Reissues tend to be bloated affairs, though, and this one is no different. This package contains 107 tracks, including a mono-only version of the original album, an album of homemade demos, an album of outtakes, yet another album of outtakes from a Rick Rubin/Billy Corgan collaboration, and live recordings from monstrous shows at L.A.‘s Dodger Stadium, among other tidbits.

These B-sides can be fun to sporadically visit, and the outtakes reveal a lot of the more extreme electronic and acoustic-balladry directions that ended up getting streamlined and subdued on Adore. But the reissue’s meat and potatoes-the actual album, as well as its warm mono-rendered sibling—is still phenomenal. Throughout Adore are moments that perhaps prove the Pumpkins’ retrospective influence on all things that weren’t hard rock—hell, “Tear” might just be the best song The Weeknd is never going to write—and certainly attest to the bravery with which they confronted the post-Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness ashes. Corgan’s lyrics, at their most personal, were also at their most conceptually and poetically sophisticated. The other 90ish songs are really just window dressings—interesting and fun to admire, but ultimately meant to envelop the intangible home inside. (www.smashingpumpkins.com)

Author rating: 7/10