Smashing Pumpkins: 'Zeitgeist'

Calling your big comeback album 'Zeitgeist' is always going to sound a little bitter, especially when your sound has come to find itself so far away from what actually be considered timely. The Pumpkin’s last album, seven years ago, was a grandiose affair that sounded like the culmination of Billy Corgan’s growing and demented vision getting increasingly out of hand.

'Zeitgeist' has plenty that will please Pumpkins fans, with titles like 'Doomsday Clock' and 'Bleeding The Orchird' and a concentration of quite heavy fuzz rock dotted with angst ridden ballads, but it is no indulgence. The opening two tracks are a bold statement (albeit virtually identical) of rock out brevity. 'Bleeding The Orchid' is more mystical and slow, but succeeds at its slow burning constructive task as well as many classics.

If there is tedium it is to be found in the over earnest 'That’s The Way (My Love Is)' and the nauseating 'Neverlost', but a more experimental and nearly ten minute track 'United States' has some truly important territorial expansion for the band and may well be the best on the album. If it finished with 'For God And Country' then 'Zeitgeist' would have avoided being one song too long, the closer 'Pomp And Circumstances' is a tiring stroll through musical scenery the group could well do without. All in all though a strong return and one that ought to be followed up.

Released 9th July 2007 by Warner.

Written by Huw Green.