Throughout rock and pop history, musicians have been undone by ambition and creative indulgence, but Billy Corgan has long thrived on both. Swimming against the current, and splashing water in our faces, has always seems to enthrall and energize him and Smashing Pumpkins. Just last year, Corgan unveiled the last disc of a three-part “rock opera,” Atum (pronounced “Autumn,” naturally), and who else would have not only turned to a long-expired rock trend but also sprinkled it with moments of musical and verbal lyricism?
With Aghori Mhori Mei, Corgan has returned to thrashy, and more compact, basics: a mere 10 songs, heavy on the thud. With the Pumpkins reduced to its core original trio — Corgan, guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — the album demonstrates that they’ve lost little of their brute force. As tracks like “Sighommi” show, they can still riff up a Twisters-of-rock storm, partying like it’s 1999, and Corgan’s voice has deepened but has retained its singular cheese-grater nasality.
But as much as the band fires up its engines, the record rarely achieves liftoff. Corgan ponders crumbling and poisonous relationships in “Pentecost” and “Goeth the Fall,” which lighten the musical if not emotional mood. But the blend of textures heard on post-reunion albums like Shiny and Oh So Bright. Vol. 1/ LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. and Cyr is largely gone, reducing the Pumpkins to an unrelenting and often oppressive metal band. With their repeated use of “thee” and lines like “Lift mine eyes in his stead,” the lyrics feel more Chaucer than Corgan, weighing things down further. You have to give it to Corgan for still devising song titles like “Sicarus,” but Aghori Mhori Mei mostly makes one yearn for concept albums again.
There’s no immediate resolution in any of this. There’s no surrender either — and a lot of great escape. White’s slide guitar in “Dollar Bill” sounds like a National Steel on steroids until the solo, when it turns into what seems like a theremin gone postal. “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing” has a great pop-wise chorus closer to the Pretty Things than Son House. And don’t miss White’s wry aside to the White Stripes’ old creation myth in the second verse of “G.O.D.,” on the way to the real business at hand. “Well, it’s the beginning of the world now,” he declares at the song’s end. “Let’s do it all over again.”
