If you still call yourself a Smashing Pumpkins fan, there's one thing you accepted long ago - Billy Corgan is a bit of a prick. The Pumpkins' head honcho thinks nothing of confusing audiences with lengthy prog-rock jams, of crafting multi-suite mid-album songs-within-songs, of nutting off at fellow musos, and of sacking bandmates when he's sick of them.
His ego comes with ambition too: this, the Pumpkins' ninth album, is part one of a double album that sits somewhere near the middle of a multi-format project called Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. When finished, it will consist of nearly 50 songs recorded over half a decade by a band undergoing constant change. The current line-up includes Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee.
Exhausted? No one would blame you - and that's exactly what makes Monuments to an Elegy such a pleasant surprise. At nine songs over an easily digestible 32 minutes, it's the shortest Pumpkins album yet. It's also the sweetest - Corgan fills his guitar-fired synth-rock space jams with lovingly simple lyrics aimed at girls called Gloria and Anaise. For once, his eyes seem to be gazing skyward when he coos lines like, "Ooh, what becomes of us lovers?"
But Monuments' biggest surprise is how at ease Corgan seems with all of this. There's no time wasted on rat-in-a-cage venom, no lyrics spat in disgust - just elegant, well-crafted songs that rock in all the right places. "I feel alright tonight" Corgan sings over the soaring riffs of Monument, setting the tone for an album shimmering with positivity. The music's upbeat too: Tiberius kicks things off with a riff Weezer would be proud of, while the fuzzed-out rawk of One and All (We Are) delivers layers of shoegazing drone. And Anti-Hero's classic hooks pay off with a chorus not seen from the Pumpkins since the late 90s.
It's not perfect - Being Beige feels underdone, while Run2Me sounds like an Adore-era castaway that has Phil Collins providing drum fills. And when Corgan overuses the line, "I will bang this drum till my dying day" on Drum + Fife, you get the impression he's not kidding. But even if he can't keep this kind of form up, Monuments to an Elegy is surely the feel-good album of the summer. For Pumpkins fans, that alone is reason enough to celebrate.
