REVIEW: THE SMASHING PUMPKINS - ATUM: A ROCK OPERA IN THREE ACTS

4/5

The Pumpkin Of The Opera. 

'Atum' baby! From ZERO to 90s golden era heroes (no emo) like a 'Siamese Dream'. If you thought 'Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness' and its ravishing reissue was Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins' magnum opus...well, you'd be right. Take it back to the '95 time before iPod's and Spotify streams where you'd have this double album alternating in your Sony Discman whilst you looked up to these metal Gods like characters in a rock opera. Well now they are, in a super sequel to the 'Sadness' and the 'Machina/The Machines Of God' 2000 concept with this classic trilogy. One told over three acts that could even make their week-by-week 'Teargarden By Kaleidyscope' project weep with envy at its palette. 

Act One took to the stage last November. Act Two, to end this January. Now the third and final act of this 11 song stream completes the 33 on the same day the conclusion to Marvel's 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' trilogy comes out. The Pumpkins' 'Christmastime' song featured in a pivotal moment of 'The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special' for James Gunn's nostalgia scoring soundtracks. And now 'Atum: A Rock Opera In Three Acts' has the Metallica metal to turn the next season of 'Stranger Things' upside down. 

This terrific twelfth studio album has well more than a dozen tracks, even if each album totals at just under that with eleven (but let's stop the 'Stranger' references). This is a playlist that you should just let play like the whole discography, 'Mellon Collie' to 'Teargarden'. Because this Smashing streaming like a Springsteen or Sinatra shows just how bold, beautiful and brilliant their body of work actually is. Stellar with no skips. Nothing but classics reminding us of a linear notes time when amazing artists released actual albums for their compelling catalogues. This is why you should buy into the idea of the physical box set and the ten extra exclusive songs you get from a band that keeps making more music no matter how many years or line-up changes they go through. Hey, John Frusciante has left and come back to the Red Hot Chili Peppers more than former Laker players. Meanwhile, this alternative rock act from Jordan's Chicagoland keep their outstanding output on loop, moving like the wind in this city. 

Act One in 2020's 'Cyr' follow-up in Halloween blue begins with the album-titled grand opening. This concept album was originally conceived around 2018, but with guitarist James Iha's return, the Pumpkins forged ahead with a fun 8-track 'Shiny and Oh So Bright', whilst planning a return to touring. A tour they are now on after COVID-19 shut everything down. A pandemic which kept us at home and Smashing in the studio, working out the songs that would become their second magnum opus, if you ever thought there could be such a thing. Continuing the 'Infinite Sadness' and 'Machina' stories of "Glass" and "Zero", the latter making for a black t-shirt more iconic in their time than Rolling Stone lips and tongues. Now known as "Shiny" like the 2018 album they are in season for the Autumn pronounced 'Atum'. 

The beautiful 'Butterfly Suite' rocks with bullet wings and 'The Good In Goodbye' shows the 'Gasms' of Smokey Robinson what he was missing. The miracle mind, comes from the epic 'Embracer'. But after that hold and tides you over, more comes to shore like the profound 'What Ado I Do' and some 'Hooligan' music. Asking, "Written as the birthright/On pregnant bough, a guarded night/Is it more than what you'd bargained for?" on 'Steps In Time'. On 'Where Rain Must Fall' Corgan tells us, "On a starway to the... /Soul infernal/Hark as eternal/Through tides of kerosene/Just put your mind out/Where it can't be reached." But it's the act one closer of 'The Gold Mask' after one last 'Hooray' and revealing what's 'Beyond The Vale' that really covers all bases. To be born anew/To live and not quite lose/To trust every day/Stay unchanged," Billy broods with biblical proportions in this engaging epic of being born again. 

Act Two storms in with an 'Avalanche' of rock and roll like 'Porcelina'. The single of the second set is the beguiling and stunning 'Beguiled', which played out on the end credits of Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston's 'Murder Mystery 2' on Netflix. These 'Neophyte' 'Empires' are worthy of legends and kings. But it's the 'Night Waves' that will take you away tonight, tonight after gathering 'Moss' like Mick Jagger. In this 'Space Age' time, lyrics lace the science to your fiction like, "Stars should follow/Stars worth sorrow/Where all tomorrows/That bore brunt, borrowed time/Used to run, run blue/I used to run, run abused/Built 'round an orbit I'd presume/But here there is nothing old, old of you (Of you)/And sold, sold as shrewd." 'Every Morning' there's more than a halo hanging with this spiritual track, before we are taken 'To The Grays'. Then 'The Culling' kills it even more with this nuanced motion that nostalgia sounds so fresh in this day and age where we miss and yearn for the good times we once had. But it's the curtain of act two, 'Springtimes' for us, that left us wanting and excited for more that has now come this May. 

The finale of 'Atun' just before summer is told to us with a seven minute 'Sojourner' that is Billy Corgan and his band's audio storytelling at its finest for their songbook. 'That Which Animates The Spirit' is exactly that. But it's 'The Canary Trainer' that you'd put down with the darkness like a coal mine. "Yes, I will let you go, I'll let you go/You broke my heart as whole/And leapt unknown and beautiful/Found where there’s lilac's brawn/Idylls born of gods/Yet wrecked in man's whole cloth/I would write his calm, I’d even toll." There is an art to Corgan's classic songwriting that is simply scripture. 'Pacer' keeps faith with that like the sweet success of 'In Lieu Of Failure'. It's tracks like 'Cenopath', 'Harmageddon' and the illuminating 'Fireflies' that are pure Pumpkins and reminders of why they were and still remain revolutionaries of our time that forgets our heroes as quick as we turn them into zeroes. 

Singing for them as this album and three part epic takes its leave 'Of Wings', the inspired 'Intergalactic' is a beast of a marvel, boy. But it's the 'Spellbinding' single and penultimate track of 'Atum' that does exactly that for us. Putting a spell of words on us like, "It's Bеrlin, baby, weimar blues!/Blues and grays won't make the change/Can you feel this love I've made?/Take me away/Take me away." Taking us away again as we find new love for Zero and Glass until we all shine like the happy people we were before the fall. 'Atum' stays attuned to the Smashing sound of what their music always meant to us. And if this operatic ode is the type of Halloween we get from the Pumpkins carving out three records for one. We can't wait for when winter is coming. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: Act One:  'Atum', 'The Good In Goodbye', 'Embracer'. Act Two: 'Empires', 'Night Waves', 'Beguiled'. Act Three: 'Sojourner', 'Cenotaph', 'Spellbinding'.