Review: Oceania

Is this review late and after-the-fact? Yes it is. Do I care? No, I do not.

Oceania is the new album by The Smashing Pumpkins.

"New album" actually isn't descriptive enough. Let's try again: Oceania is The Smashing Pumpkins' first full-length album since 2007, and is the first to include members Nicole Fiorentino (bass) and Mike Byrne (drums). It is a part of the ongoing, 44-song concept album Teargarden by Kaleidyscope that had until Oceania only been released in EPs and singles. And it is totally awesome. Oceania is one of my favorite albums of the year so far, and I am willing to say fairly certainly that it will be in my year-end top five. It rules for a lot of reasons.

Firstly, it's a return to form. Fans of the Pumpkins have been somewhat disgruntled by the recent activity by the band, and fairly so. The albums since 1998's Adore have been widely regarded as weak and uninteresting, and many people were willing to write the band off. Oceania brings them crashing back onto the scene. It achieves the grit and power of Gish and Siamese Dream, the mellow rock of Adore, and all the nuance of the 21st century. The album is aware and respectful of its origins but doesn't hide beneath them. It feels totally new, and totally worthwhile.

Secondly, it is absolutely coherent without being overly operatic. This is a surprisingly tough balance to achieve. When you're trying to put an album together in a way that unfolds and grows and evolves over the course of an hour, it's often easiest to just make a gapless concept album/rock opera because that's the most direct and structured way to give your album a voice and a story. This album avoids that trap.* Of course, this is a concept album (at least a segment of one), but it is a concept album that doesn't pander, and it has a narrative that doesn't exclude alternative interpretations.

*To be 100% clear, gapless, operatic concept albums are awesome, and are by no means easy to just toss together. But this album does it's job without resorting to that method, which I think is more of a feat. It is also probably worth noting somewhere that I am not familiar with the rest of the Teargarden by Kaleidyscope concept album, so I can't really fit this into that narrative line.

One of the central tenants of this album is openness and spiritual/artistic liberation. The lyrics of the album-opening "Quasar" and the following "Panopticon" spotlight those themes immediately. Of course, it wouldn't be a Smashing Pumpkins album without some self-indulgence on the part of Billy Corgan, and where the lyrics are philosophical and enlightened, they also carry an air of narcissism (lines like "Yes I know thy will / Yes I am that man," spoken to an intentionally ambiguous deity or "Fated One"). Even the first song name, "Quasar," referring to an area of accretion of matter around a distant supermassive black hole (surprise physics lesson!) seems to unrealistically portray the scope of the universe that Corgan questions. But that's part of the point: we are not supposed to be able to grasp the scope of the universe, or any of the powers it comprises. In this instance, I don't find the narcissism to be a shortcoming or a failure on the part of Corgan or his album. On the contrary, I think he reasserts himself as the philosophical artist that he always has been, and he uses his ego as an avenue to analyze the world and his place in it as a human.

Lyrics aside for a moment, the first two tracks are also very musically compatible and compelling songs, and they open the album with exactly the strength that the Pumpkins have seemed to lack as of late. "Quasar" leaps out of the gate with a "Cherub Rock"-esque building introduction before a sonic tidal wave of tube-driven guitars crashes out onto your head. The song swells up, and then retreats, then hits a second time. It's grand, but not glamorous or flashy. It bears the kind of power that strikes you with a sense of awe, but that leaves you with all your wits about you. Actually it probably leaves you with more wits about you than you had to begin with. "Panopticon" picks up right where "Quasar" leaves off without duplicating the image or the style in the latter. Here are two songs that must be taken in synchrony for full effect. It's a hell of a one-two punch to get things off the ground.

From here the album slows up a bit. It has proven its strength and potency, and now can get into the real core of its argument. Tracks from "The Celestials" thru "Pinwheels" are classic Pumpkins: neither boringly slow nor distressingly fast, musically accessible but artistically heightened, etc.. "My Love is Winter" has a couple of searing guitar solos and carries some great musical momentum from the preceding tracks into a very strong climax, before "One Diamond, One Heart" falls back to ground-level, and delivers basic, borderline synth pop. I actually find this to be one of the weaker songs on the album, which isn't saying much, but still. The songs build off of each other to create musical landscapes over and through which the listener ventures.

"Oceania" is (fittingly) the album's turning point. At this point, the album has laid out all it has to offer in terms of musicality and philosophy, and now it begins the process of arranging those components just so. The back half of the album will not contain any further big reveals, and it doesn't need to. "Oceania" begins to pick up the pieces and put them together into the aural mural that the album creates. It is as much a journey as the narrative fragment it describes. It has three distinct yet complimentary parts, and it's something of a masterwork. I mean, I can't really say that because Corgan has so much material in so many different veins that it's relatively impossible to pick a single magnum opus. But this song is definitely a frontrunner. My only complaint is that it fades out at the end, which seems like a bit of a cop out for a song that brought so much into the heart of this album. Nonetheless, the song fills the album's sails, and prepares the listener for reentry (mixing metaphors? DEAL WITH IT).

"Pale Horse" and "Chimera" are, music-wise, two of my favorite tracks from the album. They have memorable guitar riffs and carry great charisma into the album's final movement. There's nothing extraordinary or unique about these songs as compared with the rest of the album, and that is as it should be. The album is saving up for one final one-two punch, and these songs help carry us there without losing any listeners along the way. "Glissandra" and "Inkless" are Oceania's last stand. Again, memorable guitar riffs and familiar song structure make these two tracks radio-friendly selections. But they also carry the bulk of the burden of resolution. These songs bring the album back to where it began, but with a sense of earned liberation to replace the uncertainty and weight felt in the album's opening. The album has come full-circle, and is ready to wrap itself up.

Corgan concludes his musical journey in a way that, gently speaking, I would not have elected to. "Wildflower" is, by all means, a good song. But the album felt both musically and ideologically finished after "Inkless," and it almost seems like "Wildflower" was shoehorned in at the last minute to get the album to a nice round sixty minutes. I personally don't learn anything new about Corgan, his album, or its protagonist when I listen to "Wildflower," and I feel a little deflated after the post-"Oceania" triumph. I would not have used the song at the end, but of course it is not my album.

No need to dwell on that note. The album is a stunning success, with or without "Wildflower." It fades to silence and I find myself in a very different place than I was an hour before. It's a journey. Maybe the most excellent aspect of this album is that it remains a journey with every listen. There is no point at which I say to myself, "alright, I think I've got it, I know what happened." I learn new things every time I hear this album, or any part of it. It works on all the right levels, and is one of the most musically diverse and compelling albums of the year. The Smashing Pumpkins are unequivocally back in business, and I'm already looking forward to the continuation of this musical odyssey.