Kaddu come lately

We are thrown into the deep end of the pool as we enter Oceania, the Smashing Pumpkins' eighth studio album and, as everyone seems to love reminding us, the Chicago band's first album in five years since the 2007 Zeitgeist (which I quite liked despite the general disinterest). Indrajit Hazra writes.

Oceania
The Smashing Pumpkins
Martha's Music/EMI, Rs. 595
Rating: **

HT Image

We are thrown into the deep end of the pool as we enter Oceania, the Smashing Pumpkins' eighth studio album and, as everyone seems to love reminding us, the Chicago band's first album in five years since the 2007 Zeitgeist (which I quite liked despite the general disinterest).

Immediately we're trying to just stay afloat in the sonic swirl and the odd shark fin-sighting we get while flapping about in the water. 'Quasar' emphatically tells us where the Pumpkins' seeds come from: heavy'n'hard prog rock. The roar of the guitars and the pounding of the drums are as primal as they are technological in their classic rock poster poses. Billy Corgan may be singing about God, Krishna, Mark and Yod He being "Right on!" But this is no George Harrykrishna. Corgan could jolly well be singing away about a wolf pack tearing down the Carpathian mountains or a cloud of bullets with butterfly wings.

What matters is the sheer force. But is the opening number of one of my favourite bands more than a multi-track storm in a bottle? I don't think so.

'Panopticon' that follows has the same guitar buzz and drum thumps filling up the room. But Corgan and his new fellow Pumpkonauts put the ship into cruise speed as he sing-skis along a smiley face chorus, "There's a sun that shines/ There's a sun that shines in me." We enter a more open space in 'The celestials', in the mode of older Pumpkins strings-and-strums melodies. The tune and the accompanying mood is disjointed, as if Corgan and Co are playing this free spirited song in a crowded mall and then in an empty hall.

'Violet rays' bears the Moog sounds of the future as envisioned in the 1970s. There's a quiet beauty to the song that makes it sound like an anthem for a one-member cult.

'My love is winter' is a peppy track that sounds like an Erasure song with a 80s guitar solo thrown in for good measure. The mantra of love via synth-attack continues in 'One diamond, one heart' where things sound very Pet Shop Pumpkins. We're on a grassy-hippie knoll in 'Pinwheels'. "Mother moon/ mistress of the sun, say/ I got you, I got you" are perfect words to listen while having your organic tofu dinner and before settling down in your vastu-ticked bed.

By the time I reach the title track, I realise what Corgan meant about this album being part of a 44-song 'concept album', Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. Does anything but a mysteriously intangible concept stay in my head after listening to this album? Any riffs? Any tunes? Any words? Any moods. Nope. Lacking the majesty of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) and the glorious rip of the early Pumpkins albums, Oceania feels the way Corgan wanted it to be, I guess: a sound-soaked Zen-xy landscape. One that I can put away when I have the need to listen to Smashing Pumpkins music.

Voice, Song, voice
A victim of stars
David Sylvian
Virgin, Rs. 1,947
Rating: ***1/2
For reasons hard to fathom now, I had picked up a second-hand album from a roadside rack on Calcutta's Free School Street in the late 80s. It was Brilliant Trees by David Sylvian, someone whom I had never heard of. I suspect that the LP was going cheap and it was in mint condition, two factors that usually determined my purchasing decisions of unknown artists in those pre-internet, pre-MTV days.

So imagine my happy surprise when some 25 years after I first heard 'Red guitar' (and some 20 years since I last heard it), I listen to those dour bass notes again marking Sylvian's deep, clear-as-ether voice singing, "I recognise no method of living that I know/ I see only the basic materials I may use." Despite the jazzy piano that follows, I got happy gooseflesh as I heard Sylvian lay out the words, "I play my red guitar/ It's the devil in the flesh/ It's the iron in my soul." Here was — is — the perfect amalgam of voice, music and words making an origami song.

Sylvian was the frontman of the 70s-80s British New Wave band Japan, best known for its cat-scratch rendition of Barbra Streisand's 'Don't rain on my parade' from the musical Funny Girl. But it was the ascetic Roxy Music Lite music of Sylvian as a solo artist that has withstood the test of time and taste. This 2-CD compilation, A Victim of Stars, contains pretty much everything from the 1982-2012 repertoire. Including that mysterious Japan chart-topper 'Ghosts', a stripped-to-the-bone song that's shocking for being a hit. Listen to tracks like 'Taking the veil', the dirgeful 'Let the happiness in' and 'Every colour you are' and you're listening to classics.