Those heavy moments don’t get much heavier than this ‘Mellon Collie’ album cut, four minutes of pile-driving, doom-inspired whaling on which Corgan screams that “love is suicide”. This menacing, razor wire guitar track – looped around a scything riff that slides into a squealing, barbed solo – leaves no doubt that Corgan and the gang, even in the middle of an indulgent double album, could still blow your brain off its axis.
‘Mellon Collie’ is, to say the least, a complicated record, and for all that aforementioned inflated sense of importance, it also contains some of the Pumpkins’ roughest and heaviest moments. Some of ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ feels overblown, but – despite a sprinkling of piano – this one’s right on the money. “The world is a vampire / Sent to drain.” Those iconic lines usher in one of the Pumpkins’ most distinctive songs, an idiosyncratic grunge banger with a muted, melodic verse. Props also to Jimmy Chamberlin’s metronome percussion, which creates a sense sense of anticipation in the verse, before the chorus achieves euphoric release. Look, we couldn’t squeeze in ‘Disarm’, so here’s another epic strings’n’guitar weepie from the Chicago dons, as they implore us, “ Believe in me / As I believe in you / Tonight”. It’s a toughie to choose a standout from – that accolade could well go to the lovelorn ‘Mayonnaise’ – though ‘Geek U.S.A’, managing to combine Slash-style guitar noodling with a soaring, melancholic hook and even an ambient mid-track coda (Corgan was wildly inspired at this point), perhaps deserves the slot. The latter half of ‘Siamese Dream’ is a delicious soup of amazing grunge songs, peppered with the odd classic rock flourish. This single (which inspired the band’s 1993 masterwork ‘Siamese Dream’), mellow but heavy, wistful and raging, epitomises everything we still love about Corgan and the gang – so no wonder still graces setlists all these years later. Hard to believe that when the Pumpkins arrived with their 1991 debut album ‘Gish’, their sound – a heady concoction of grunge, shoegaze and dream-pop – was already so fully formed, yet here we are. P.S! We’ve whacked these tracks into a playlist, which appears at the end of the article, so you can listen to it Tonight, Tonight (and also any other time). In anticipation of the record, frontman Billy Corgan and the gang are playing tonight – live! – at the SSE Arena in London, so what better time to tell us in the Facebook comments that we’ve missed out your favourite in our list of the 20 best Smashing Pumpkins songs? We’ve already heard their comeback single ‘Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)’ and, blessed relief, it’s a belter. No Sun., proving that the grunge dons haven’t lost their knack for overblown album titles. Billy’s back, baby, as the Smashing Pumpkins ready themselves to release 10th album Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol.