OCEANIA by The Smashing Pumpkins

Billy Corgan seems to have found his space between sordid viciousness and dream-like mellow-ness. ‘Oceania’ is alternatingly haunting and raging. This may well be the most refined record to date released by The Smashing Pumpkins. Album-opener ‘Quasar’ is noisy, forceful and hard-hitting. In a similar vein, ‘Panopticon’ is a grungy, dirty mess with drums and guitars fighting for space which magically manages to remain up-beat. Again, ‘The Chimera’ is familiar, catchy and reminiscent of ‘Gish’-era The Smashing Pumpkins with wailing notes over heavy distorted punk-ness. On the other hand, ‘Wild-flower’ features strings-heavy riffage, almost-Gregorian choral backing and chiming piano chords over some lovely verses (“Wild-flower in the wilderness outside, take your chance with love and laughter and every word I write.”) that make this track memorable. 

However, the sophistication that The Smashing Pumpkins seems to have discovered sears through in their musings in the really, really remarkable pieces off this album that are ‘The Celestials’ with its acoustic chord progressions and orchestral swells poured over Corgan’s trade-mark belting, ‘Pinwheels’ with its spine-tingling embellishments and Pink Floyd-influenced melody and the uber-chic ‘Violet Rays’, which features a shimmering entrance of notes leading to an undistorted strumming passage that quickly culminates into a crunch-packed body, complementing Corgan’s wails with bags of melodic thunder. 

‘Glissandra’ is a smooth, tight, glimmering piece, but along with the plunging, synthesized ‘Pale Horse’ is one of the weak songs on this record. This record is odd, inasmuch it does not have the melodic consistency of ‘Adore’, nor the from-the-hip attack of ‘Siamese Dream’, which might let some down. What it does have is a fair amount of effort and thought devoted to production, arrangement and structuring. So, with Oceania, expect a clean-cut record, which does not work wonders but manages to keep The Smashing Pumpkins relevant.