"I Wanted More Than Life Could Ever Grant Me..."

Author's Rating:

Pros: the lyrics, the production, the music

Cons: none

The Bottom Line: 
Forget the MCIS hype, Siamese Dream is the best album the Smashing Pumpkins ever recorded, period.

Author's Review
I've always felt that Billy Corgan was probably the most pretentious a*shole in the music business today. But that doesn't mean that his band was anything short of being great, it just means that Billy Corgan was probably the most pretentious a*shole in the music business.

I say that because I'm rather miffed at the crap that the current crop of popular rock bands spews out. What's perhaps most ironic about Corgan was that he wrote songs that he gave an almost god-like status to in his own mind, but they were songs that actually came close to deserving that status. Compare Corgan with say, Scott Stapp of Creed, and it becomes obvious that either one of two things is true: Corgan is either a really good songwriter, or Stapp is a really bad one.

While Corgan's latter days in the Smashing Pumpkins were marked by a somewhat frustrating inconsistency, the days of the Pumpkins that saw them having their greatest success were marked by song after song of quality material, both lyrically and musically. To be succinct, the Pumpkins, and more accurately, Corgan, were able to write tunes that varied greatly and yet, were all eminently listenable. No album of theirs shows this better than 1993's Siamese Dream, AKA the album that broke the band.

The band had gained a cult-like following with their EP Lull and debut album Gish. But it wasn't until Siamese Dream that the band would breakthrough to mainstream acceptance as part of the "alternative nation" movement, mostly thanks to their hits Today and Disarm.

The album opens with the first single from the record, Cherub Rock. While the song never really blew up big, it did create a buzz about the band, and with good reason. With its excellent buildup intro, featuring the powerhouse drumming of Jimmy Chamberlin, and swirling guitars, it's a good primer for what is to be found on the rest of the disc. The songs are have gorgeous lyrics, the music an intense musical power that few bands could match at the time.

In many ways, Siamese Dream is the most current version of Phil Spector's wall of sound. The guitars are seemingly everywhere, Corgan's vocals are mixed perfectly, and the drums are just absolutely beaten into submission by Chamberlin. It's important to note that while this is a rock album, there are more than a good amount of pop flourishes in even the most rocking of numbers.

Of course, the most obvious example of this is the simple melody that begins Today, an inspirational song in tone, although not necessarily in the lyrics (my title is a line from said song), but Corgan injects the song with a youthful spirit that transcends the actual words in the song and their literal meanings.

Rocket, the fourth single from the album, has an extremely catchy guitar riff driving it forward, and on the bridge, Corgan does his best to harmonize with the music. On the previously mentioned Disarm, the band creates a sweeping ballad that uses strings prominently, and in many ways, the strings play the real hook to the song. Further, the musical ideas found in Disarm would be taken to even greater lengths on Tonight Tonight from the follow up effort, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

There's plenty to like here though outside of the radio singles. More than casual fans of the band will notice some of this album's ideas being purged for MCIS, and I'm not just talking the obvious Tonight Tonight/Disarm comparisons. Rockers like the pounding Quiet and Geek USA have more than a bit of future hit Zero in them, while quieter tracks like Soma show the diversity of the band off nicely.

While MCIS is ultimately a more diverse and adventurous record, Siamese Dream is merely very satisfying from beginning to end, and I love it for that. It is, in effect, the near perfect rock album, a good mix of rockers and slower songs, melody and chaos, truth and pretentiousness. If you don't own this, then I guess you don't like 1990s rock music very much.

More on Smashing Pumpkins:

Lull