Smashing Pumpkins: Symphonies about Siamese Dreams

It's been years and years since rock music was still important and had great relevance. Artists were not pop bunnies who sang with computer voices, but stars with guitars, poets, explainers of the world.

Today is the day to look at "Siamese Dream" by the Smashing Pumpkins again.

After highly acclaimed tours and half a million copies of the album "Gish" sold, the Smashing Pumpkins faced high expectations. New superstars were springing up all around, Perarl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden... what would Billy Corgan and his team have to counter?

Everything. With "Siamese Dream" the quartet managed to square the circle 30 years ago: the album appealed to fans of independent sounds as well as open-minded, compromise-ready metalheads and the scene of new grunge fans in their lumberjack shirts.

The Chicago band's recipe was as simple as it was effective. The Pumpkins combine the hardness of grunge with psychedelic adventurousness and create an amazingly unique sound. In the case of their current album, stressful events behind the scenes that brought the quartet to the brink of disintegration revealed a work full of nervous restlessness.

The mini-symphony “Disarm” is the furthest away from conventional rock behavior. With acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, timpani and strings, the Americans struck unexpectedly restrained tones here. “Cherub Rock” and “Geek U.S.A.” On the other hand, they develop the breathtaking wildness that the band around the brilliant frontman Corgan also develops on stage.

So to this day, "Siamese Dreams" is an album that thrives on contrasts - and, as we now know, a foretaste of the true greatness that was to come with "Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness".