Smashing Pumpkins – Zeitgeist / Martha's Music Audio CD 2007 / 9362-49977-8

UPC 093624997788

The Smashing Pumpkins are back! After seven years, the acclaimed Pumpkins have returned with Zeitgeist. Featuring the single "Tarantula," this new sound is not to be missed.\

Zeitgeist is the seventh studio album by American rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released on July 10, 2007 on Martha's Music and Reprise Records. Recorded solely by returning band members Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, the album was the band's first since reuniting in 2006, and was produced by Roy Thomas Baker and Terry Date, alongside Corgan and Chamberlin themselves.

Preceded by the single, "Tarantula", the album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, but sales soon decreased, and critical reception was mixed. It was certified Gold in the United States on February 1, 2008.^[4] To tour in support of the release, Corgan and Chamberlin recruited touring members, Jeff Schroeder (guitar), Ginger Reyes (bass) and Lisa Harriton (keyboards), with Shroeder eventually becoming a core member of the band. The album was the last to feature Chamberlin until 2018's Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun..

Inside the buzzing hive of Smashing Pumpkins' guitars is clearly where bandleader Billy Corgan feels most comfortable. So, after a seven-year hiatus for the short-lived group Zwan and his surprisingly sunny 2005 solo album, Corgan has revived the Pumpkins in all the six-string-spattered shades of emotional gray that made them one of the greatest bands of the alt-rock era. Longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, along with famed boardsmiths Roy Thomas Baker and Terry Date as well as Corgan himself coproduced. Chamberlin also supports mountainous layers of guitar with his fiercest playing. This is a version of the band dedicated to early bare-knuckled form, with a few exceptions: Corgan's grown into a more powerful wordsmith and his lengthy guitar solo explorations of yore are replaced with a trim, barbed textural approach that's ultimately more vicious. That is, until the centerpiece "United States" stretches into an epic punk-metal-informed sibling of Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun," with Corgan's strings singing like explosions and twisting metal as he warbles about revolution. Much of this album conjures literal and sonic visions of apocalypse, but there's grace, too, in the blithe grind of the hopeful "That's the Way (My Love Is)" and the melodic "Neverlost." Overall, Corgan's captivating effort to mine both the spirit of these turbulent times and the soul of his defining band is a smashing success. --Ted Drozdowski