SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: SMASHING PUMPKINS – CYR

The Smashing Pumpkins
Cyr
Sumerian Records

The latest double album release by The Smashing Pumpkins, Cyr, featuring 20 new songs written by leader Billy Corgan, was bound to be a hit-and-miss affair with a recording project this ambitious and prolific.

Produced by Corgan at Nowhere Studios in Chicago, and featuring original members James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin, along with guitarist Jeff Schroeder, the album gets off to a rip-roaring start with the title track and first single and video, “Cyr”. This single was the most added track at Alternative Radio the week it was released, and the accompanying YouTube video, co-produced by Linda Strawberry and Corgan, has already been viewed more than a million times.

The second single and video “The Colour Of Love” is also outstanding, and features a terrific animated video and wonderful background vocals by Katie Cole and Sierra Swan. Both singles seamlessly move into consideration as two of The Smashing Pumpkins’ finest songs to date. Other tracks that deserve some attention and that feature Corgan’s trademark snarly vocals include “Wrath”, “Confessions of a Dopamine Addict”, and “Anno Satana”.

Unfortunately, the rest of the double album doesn’t live up to the promise of the first two singles and videos. Tracks like “Ramona”, “Minerva”, “Dulcit In E”, and  “Black Forest, Black Hills”, seem like throwaway tracks put together in the studio solely to augment his double album concept, rather than to enhance it in any way. It probably would have been better for the listener if he had condensed this, the band’s 11th studio album, into a solid 10-song single album release.

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