Smashing Pumpkins, Wembley Arena review: Billy Corgan gives fans the pompous and poignant show they've been waiting for
Mining the childhood trauma and Sabbath-worship of their singer and guitarist Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins were briefly one of the world's biggest bands in the mid-1990s. Fusing metal with psychedelia, they shot for the stars with second album Siamese Dream in 1993 and reached their logical conclusion with double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a genre-hopping tour de force which was so comprehensive and of its time it may as well have been called Now That's What I Call Angst.
They split three records later in 2000, but the band have been reunited with a shifting line-up for 12 years, as long as their original run, and produced three new albums. The difference at Wembley Arena is the return of Corgan's conspirator for the band's best years, James Iha.
Iha's pretty playing had little to do with the Pumpkins' bludgeoning sound but he did at least appear to be healthily embarrassed by Corgan's antics, possibly tempering his worst pretentious leanings and misguidedly bold public statements. Indeed, without Iha around seven years ago, Corgan said: "The Pumpkins won’t be a nostalgia act, we refuse to be."
For much of their second incarnation this has meant, shall we say, "challenging" setlists, heavy on new material and deep cuts from the 1990s albums. On Tuesday night, wearing an asymmetric silver dressing gown and more eye makeup than most 51-year-olds would deem acceptable, Corgan finally gave his patient fans what they have been waiting for.
In a set of Springsteenian length the band played just one song from their post-reunion years and a selection of their back catalogue so crowdpleasing it could have been cribbed directly from Spotify's "most played " stats.
They sounded spectacular, a fuzz pedal thunderstorm of recklessly loud guitar, Jimmy Chamberlain pounding his drums like several dozen tribes preparing for battle, Corgan struggling a little with the high notes but growling in all the right places, like during punky manifesto Zero. Pompous visuals suggested a band finally in touch with their own ridiculousness.
At least you'd hope so, given the demented combination on the big screens: interpretive dance, shots of Corgan walking ominously through the night, and his face appearing on a series of Tarot cards. Corgan should have a stern word with his visual director, although given the amount of Billy Corgan iconography involved, the name of that visual director may well be Billy Corgan.
No amount of dubious imagery or redundant covers (Space Oddity! Stairway To Heaven! Yes, actually!) can sour a delighted crowd. It was an overblown and often ridiculous show but poignant, too. Corgan and his band inspired a certain fervour in troubled teenagers which felt undimmed. It is their most optimistic song Tonight Tonight which unites the audience: "Lives can change," Corgan sings, "you're not stuck in vain".
Perhaps after years of braving increasingly unsatisfying gigs and albums, those words ring true for his fans.
