*The* Pumpkins Recording to Own

I've encountered so many people that claim to be Smashing Pumpkins fans, and yet they don't have this record. For that matter, some kids think the Pumpkins started with _Siamese Dream_, which is even stranger...

Most people I know unanimously agree this is their best work. It features all of the classic Pumpkin's traits evident in their new stuff, but in a more nascent stage.

Things that are now Pumpkins cliches - which I think Corgan is consciously trying to skirt - are fresh and new on this. The classic Jimmy Chamberlain floor tom/hat "Pumpkins beat" is all over this - in fact, a cool/funny thing is that the first two songs utilize this beat back to back. This is one of Butch Vig's (nirvana, Garbage, _siamese dream-)earlier production credits, and the drum sound is terrific, if a little lacking in the deep low end. Chamberlain's touch on this recording is captured, the various rimshots and tom accents are not masked by an overly dense recording style. A great, natural drum sound.

The simple stereo guitar sound on this recording is Corgan's best I think. The opening riff of "Siva" rocks about as hard as possible, but again doesn't interfere with the rest of the mix. The song itself is cool in that it has a neat open sounding breakdown section on the second verse that compliments the brash sound of the main riff. Terse aggressiveness throughout.

"I Am One" has a very cool F#11 chord on the guitar as an opener, something you don't usually hear with this much distortion, then morphs into a typically Pumpkin-esque "rawk riff". It seems Corgan gave up bothering with oddball chord voicings after this record, which is a shame - but he kept the open E-major voicing as a trademark/clich I suppose...
The psychedelic middle 8 is great as well - I miss that aspect in the new stuff. The Pumpkin's back then had a bit of a Floyd influence I think...

The rest of the record goes all over the place, including a sort of Cocteu Twins territory with D'arcy singing, and an quirky demo sounding ditty to close the record out. The pacing on the record seemed to be perfect, and the *sound* of the record is tremendous, a great blend of up front sounds that don't interfere with each other. Corgan seemed a little less... worried about perhaps the pop aspect of the songs back then I think. Not that I dislike what he does now, it's just that there's some things on this recording that sound a little more daring, or perhaps less *calculated* daring when compared to the new stuff.