Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist

Many, many years ago, during my high school years, I was the biggest Smashing Pumpkins fan. I listened to the double disk Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness all the time and saw them in concert. For a while, I would say they were on equal grounds as my favorite band with Pearl Jam (who are now firmly entrenched at #1 all by themselves), but things changed. To me, their next 2 cds weren't as good, and in 2000 the band broke up because of inner band conflicts (Wikipedia summary here). Lead singer Billy Corgan went on to record a solo disk (TheFutureEmbrace) and a cd with his new band Zwan (Mary Star of the Sea). While neither effort was bad, neither was as good as his Smashing Pumpkins work either.

Well, I am happy to say that on Tuesday, a brand new Smashing Pumpkins cd was released. While Zeitgeist only includes half of the original lineup (Corgan, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin), it sounds like a Smashing Pumpkins record and immediately took me back to my high school days. So far, I would say that Zeitgeist is good (not great) and that it definitely rocks. If you enjoyed Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie, then you will probably enjoy this. I'm usually skeptical when a band reunites without all of its original parts, but this time it seems to have worked. Its at least worth checking out a song or two over at their MySpace page.

One final (semi-related) note, Dictionary.com defines Zeitgeist as: the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.