Album Review: Smashing Pumpkins - Monuments To An Elegy

Is anyone seriously invested in Billy Corgan’s musical exploits these days? Even the most die-hard Pumpkins fans will have a longing nostalgia for the days of Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.

Nonetheless, the reformed unit have certainly been improving since they first jumped back on stage. The awkwardly titled Monument To An Elegy, part two of the ongoing Pumpkins musical experiment Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, is pretty much more of what you’d expect after Oceania, which is to say, it’s not at all bad, but not at all warranted either.

Prog-rock influenced post-grunge ballads carry the record, all anchored by Corgan’s seemingly ageless vocal chops. The songwriting is competent and occasionally quite enjoyable, especially on highlight track, the grungy rocker One And All. For all the hype surrounding Tommy Lee’s percussive appearance on the record, his presence ultimately does little outside of solidify the man as being a hype over substance drummer. Surprising as it may sound though, Corgan and co. seem to know their limitations here, keeping the album lean and short, barely clocking in at over half an hour. Smashing Pumpkins will never reach their 1990s heyday again, but really, this is an honest to god better record than we ever had dared to expect from them in a post-Zeitgeist world.

Even if Monument... is part of the ongoing piece of music that is his best material in over a decade, it doesn’t save it from being ultimately meandering, generic and a shadow of former wonder.