Jane Magazine
Thanks to Eve for sending this review.
"it's supposed to be the rebirth of the band." says guitarist James Iha, of the Smashing Pumpkins fourth studio record the first without drummer jimmy Chamberlin. "We decided that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was going to be our last hurrah as a rock band. We wanted to make Adore more atmospheric. So it's a transition to people seeing us in a more contemporary light." James is alluding to the fact that the music pioneered in the early 1990's has been so copied that the most exciting things today "are hybrids like rap and electronic music>" While this record has little in common with those genres, it does have moments that sound like old style Pumpkins crossed with Portishead. Lyrically, Adore has an inordinate number of songs addressed to women. " I had nothing to do with that ," says James laughing, because all of the pumpkins songs are written by singer Billy Corgan. relatively benign ladies are the subject of To Shelia, For Martha, Daphne Descends and a mother is addressed in Once Upon a Time. AWW. But evil, black widow types seemed to have inspired Pug, Annie Dog and Ava Adore, on which Billy sings the nasty couplet. "Its you that I adore/You'll always be my whore. My favorite lyric is from blank page : You remind me/of that leak in my soul. Somehow that line sums up everything that is good about the Pumpkins.-Christina Kelly