SIAMESE DREAM
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SIAMESE DREAM, SMASHING PUMPKINS' second full length release is over an hour's worth of spiritual and sonic transcendence. Its thirteen songs are massive yet sharply focused, overwhelming yet frighteningly direct. Simply put, SIAMESE DREAM is epic.
These four Chicago non-hipsters, with the assistance of Wisconsonite Butch Vig, have mustered every possible combination of tone and dynamic in order to crush "heavy rock" into dust and swallow "pop" whole. Vig's production makes a leap to match the band's improvement, a staggering feat in and of itself. Corgan, who co-produced the album with Vig, explains SIAMESE DREAM's unearthly spectrum of guitar tones: "I was trying to get the sound of things like coughing angels, the king and queen of the prom setting themselves on fire, losers getting laid, high hopes being ripped down and fizzing out."
SIAMESE DREAM is a cathedral built on the foundation of GISH, the band's debut LP (released on Caroline Records in 1991). More punishing and more gorgeous than its predecessor, it expressed the peaks and valleys of the human relationship through bold outpourings of tension, vulnerability, wonder, and release. "Cherub Rock" waxes introspective on the post-grunge baby-band boom, while "Quiet" and "Mayonaise" update the PUMPKINS' signature blend of Hendrix-ian fervor and sublime melody (the latter being one of the LP's two songwriting collaborations between Corgan and guitarist James Iha). "Geek USA" proves that musical expertise needn't stand in the way of a riff-heavy good time--a band has't had this much fun with a tune since David Lee Roth took off those big furry boots. The eight minute plus "Silverfuck" is undoubtedly the record's piece de resistance, with vertigo-inducing highs that plumb the horrors of the stratosphere and smothering depths that suck in lungfulls of despair and spit out either. Two tracks later, "Luna" closes the album on a beautiful, if disquieting note. Corgan is selfless in laying his soul bare, delivering the song's gentle refrain with no fear for his own vulnerability.
"I came to the fact that I could never be completely happy with the actual music." says Corgan. "So that's not what I was focusing on. I made the emotional commitment that I wanted to on this record, which is all I cared about."
That said, Corgan is disregarding the distinct probability of Siamese Dream's becoming the textbook of guitar and production technique for a generation of teenage suburbanites: unpretentious, unintentional guitar heroics, atmospheric string arrangements on "Disarm" and "Luna".
SMASHING PUMPKINS' love of entropy and noise is equaled only by their penchant for tunefulness. The band harnesses chaos without sacrificing power and spins galssine melodies. On Siamese Dream the band reaches a level of mastery, transferring this highly developed craft into a breathtaking emotional wallop. Every song hist pressure points that most people have either repressed or forgotten. The resulting chills, pheromones and endorphins are only slightly less dangerous than real drugs . . .
(And in case you haven't heard it yet, it rocks like a bastard . . . )