The Smashing Pumpkins
The Tivoli, Brisbane
Sunday 17 October 2010
Yes, Billy Corgan is the only remaining original member of The Smashing Pumpkins. Yes, he wrote most of the band’s songs. Yes, he has drafted in three new musicians to play them. We knew all of that before we walked in the door, so there’s no point in bickering over it now. Only two questions matter, really: are they any good? And: are they worth paying $90 to see?
That this show sold out within five minutes (or thereabouts) suggests that many are still willing to bank on Billy showing us a good time, though I suspect scepticism pervades many of the conversations taking place around the venue. Despite a disappointing showing at V Festival three years ago – when Jimmy Chamberlin was still behind the kit – tonight I’m giving Billy benefit of the doubt. Besides the number of bodies in the room, there’s nothing out of the ordinary – except for a small, cordoned-off VIP section tucked away at the front of one of The Tivoli’s balconies. Its inhabitants include Jessica Origliasso – she of the Veronicas, and coincidentally, Corgan’s current squeeze – and presumably, Origliasso’s family and friends. Owing to the singer’s Brisbane connection, it seems we have a hometown advantage of sorts. Which will come into play later.
It’s always interesting to watch artists with deep back catalogues, as there’s a fine line between crowd-pleasing and self-satisfaction. Smashing Pumpkins’ set tonight is cleverly balanced: as a newly-independent band, they’re ostensibly here to promote
Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, a 44-track album that’s being drip-fed to the band’s fanbase online for free. Several of these new songs appear throughout the set, and they’re not just tolerated, they’re enjoyed. It’s a unique promotional strategy – booking whirlwind world tours, announced just
a month in advance – and certainly a far cry from the dated album/tour cycle. Corgan could be onto something here. If the material’s good enough to maintain a fanbase – and there are hints throughout the set tonight that it is – he and his band could be forging the path for sustainable careers as working musicians, releasing music online and touring on demand. Or maybe I’m looking into it too much.
The hits? ‘Ava Adore’ and ‘Today’ early on; the electronic backbone of the former replaced with a booming bassline, and the latter performed perfunctorily. Merely serviceable renditions, both. Unlike the twitchy opening rhythm and octave chords of ‘Cherub Rock’, which provoke pure joy. ‘Zero’ follows, and when Corgan pauses to let the crowd proposition him (
“Wanna go for a ride?”), it’s totally fucking cool. ‘Stand Inside Your Love’ completes a trio of singles, but ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ isn’t far away. Each of these songs are faithfully performed – most notably by the band’s phenomenal 20 year-old drummer, Mike Byrne, who is without doubt worthy of Chamberlin’s seat – even though the band seem to be going through the motions. Which is understandable, in Corgan’s case at least, but there’s a great moment during the quiet middle-eight of ‘Bullet’ wherein the crowd sing the chorus back en masse, while Billy studies his guitar pick and pretends to be aloof. He joins us with an enormous “…CAAAAAAAGE”.
“Do you know what Brisbane is famous for?” asks Corgan of his guitarist, Jeff Schroeder, midway through the set.
“Hot chicks,” Schroeder replies, without hesitation. This doesn’t seem to be the answer Corgan was looking for, but he smiles.
“Good answer.” He asks his bassist, Nicole Fiorentino (formerly of Veruca Salt and Spinnerette). A spotlight flicks onto her, which becomes a spontaneous visual punchline, judging by the wolf whistles.
“Hot chicks,” she replies. Then Corgan – somewhat foiled, I think, as I have a feeling he was itching to mention the Veronicas – dedicates the next song, ‘Spangled’, to “all the hot chicks in the crowd”.
A suave Led Zeppelin cover, ‘Moby Dick’, makes an appearance, complete with Byrne doing his best four-minute John Bonham, concluding with a hit from the gong hanging behind him. ‘Tonight, Tonight’ is the set’s penultimate song,‘Tarantula’ from 2007’s
Zeitgeist closes the set; Corgan and Schroeder slip in a cheeky instrumental snippet of the Vines’ ‘Get Free’, whose mindless chorus is filled in by the audience. (the Vines’ Craig Nicholls
appeared at last night’s Sydney show for a rendition of the song, and Corgan
tweeted earlier today that he “can't get 'Get Free' by @thevinesband out of my head. It's on INFINITY repeat. Craig, make it stop.”
After 90 minutes we reach the encore, and with it, the hometown advantage to which I hinted. Corgan returns with an acoustic guitar and serenades us three songs: newie ‘A Stitch In Time’, ‘Stumbleine’ from Mellon Collie, and surprisingly, ‘Disarm’, from their 1993 breakthrough
Siamese Dream. Why break out the extended acoustic love-in tonight? That the Origliassos are in attendance seems more than coincidental. Gladly, the rest of us soak in his impassioned ‘Disarm’ reading and sing along, strange as it is to witness a 43 year-old man sing the universal truism
“I used to be a little boy / So old in my shoes”. His bandmates return and the set ends with ‘Gossamer’, an outtake from the
Zeitgeist sessions. Although it’s an extravagant, 20 minute-long electric guitar freakout – half the fun is watching the crowd thin, as people either run for the last train or their beds ahead of the work week. And so strangely, it’s more of a whimper than the preceding acoustic songs. Still, at the conclusion of a two-hour-plus set, let’s revise. Q: Are they any good? A: Yes. Q: Are they worth paying $90 to see? A: Yes.
Andrew McMillen
(Photographers for this event were subject to stringent guidelines, distant positioning and other barriers designed to make a photographers experience difficult. Thanks to Justin Edwards for the pics.)