The Smashing Pumpkins - Aghori Mhori Mei (Album Review)
Tuesday, 06 August 2024
Written by Jack Press
Photo: Paul Elledge
The Smashing Pumpkins’ back catalogue has more highs and lows than a mountaineer’s career. Their early output scaled mountains, planting their flag at alt-rock’s summit, but since original members Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlain made peace in 2018, they’ve struggled to reach base camp.
Listening to 2023’s ‘Atum’ — a triple-album addendum to 1995’s ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ and 2000’s ‘Machina/Machine of God’ — was like running an ultra-marathon through molasses. Its predecessor ‘Cyr’ was a similar slog, and recent deep cut-heavy setlists, which largely ignore the hits that shot them into the arenas they’re still playing, have added to a feeling of indifference.
But ‘Aghori Mhori Mei’, their 13th album, punctures that soporific atmosphere with a scalpel. Its 10 tracks offer up some of the Pumpkins’ most memorable songs in a decade.
In 45 lean, mean minutes Corgan proves the axiom ‘you can’t go home again’ wrong, triumphantly returning the band to the grunge-addled graveyards and dream-pop fields they plundered in their golden age.
Edin and Pentagrams, a 12-minute, two-track opening salvo, sounds like the Pumpkins flexing their muscles. Chamberlain’s hefty percussion collides with duelling guitars, while Corgan’s parasitic repetition of lyrics nestles in your brain.
Sighommi rolls its riffs around your brain like a rollercoaster, with live member Katie Cole’s shimmering dual-harmonies hopping, skipping, and jumping over Corgan’s. This two-minute adrenaline rush gives way to album highlight Pentecost. Less a song and more a living, breathing organism, its meditation on the peaks and troughs of love radiates light with glimmering piano, shimmering synths, and silky strings.
Murnau’s synths pound out a heartbeat as its strings pump blood through its veins, bringing a spiritual rebirth to a close in majestic fashion. ‘Aghori Mhori Mei’ is a surprising shock to The Smashing Pumpkins’ system. After six years of challenging treks, they appear ready to scale their Everest once again.
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