The Smashing Pumpkins at the RDS, Dublin
"...it's to the Pumpkins’ credit that they remain determined to provide a show refreshingly different to the one their fans may have expected."
Kilian Murphy, 14 Feb 2008
The Smashing Pumpkins have never been ones to do things by half-measures, and tonight will bear testament to that. The group play for over two and a half hours, though they do not use this time in the same way that, say, Bruce Springsteen would – i.e. playing as many gems from his catalogue as possible, to ensure that every fan will feel that they've received value for money.
The Pumpkins’ disregard for brevity, on the other hand, appears to be born of their curmudgeonly nature; it's a means of ensuring that if fans came expecting to hear the hits or classics, they must sit through extended periods of tortuous, self-indulgent quasi-shoegazer doodling and tribal drum rolls to hear them.
Still, it's to the Pumpkins’ credit that they remain determined to provide a show refreshingly different to the one their fans may have expected. At all stages of the concert, Billy Corgan seems hesitant to just punch out the hits, and in its opening stages this feels like a wise move. Instead of blitzing the audience with a flurry of pomp-grunge classics, he opts to envelope them in a haze of lush, nocturnal melody. More obscure tracks like ‘Behold! The Nightmare’ showcase his skills as a low-key songwriter, and the sound is just sublime – all rich, flowing piano and crisp, piercing guitar.
Every so often he slips in a classic, and sure enough, these more recognisable songs provoke the warmest audience reactions. The grandiose take on ‘Tonight Tonight’, and a gorgeous acoustic reading of ‘1979’ are particularly spellbinding.
Still, a point is eventually reached in the evening at which Billy’s cussed nature and love of go-nowhere sonics becomes a little too much to stomach. There's a period in the concert – which feels like almost an hour – during which Billy and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain are locked in a battle to out-doodle each other, without a riff, or a fragment of recognisable melody to make sense of the indulgence.
The ego-music is eventually concluded, and the concert finishes with a blast of more focused hard-rocking. Therein lies the appeal of the Pumpkins, perhaps: finding the good stuff can often feel like a hunt for buried treasure.
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