If Billy
Corgan’s massive reissue project is any hint, the Smashing Pumpkins have always
been a profusely prolific act. There are literally hundreds of tunes in their
back catalog, and Billy Corgan and Jeff Schroeder are still adding to that
legacy. Since the first time they captured my imagination in high school, this
band’s music consistently and relentlessly pulls me back in. Almost seasonally,
I am compelled to return to their records, not just to bathe in nostalgia, but
also that I might discover some new nuance or flourish that I had missed. Recently, I got back into the swing of Gish, the Smashing Pumpkins’ debut LP.
This time, however, I attempted to listen to it with fresh ears, to let it
impress itself upon me in the same way it did years ago, and I was not
disappointed.
Despite a relatively small budget at the time of recording,[1] the direction and drive of
both Billy Corgan and producer Butch Vig makes Gish sound twice as huge and ten times more expensive. The
instrumentation on this record, which features multiple overdubs, textures, and
interlocking harmonies, is impeccable and airtight. The eclectic arrangement of
tunes that make up its ten tracks, from stomping rockers like “I Am One” and
“Tristessa” to the whisper of “Crush,” gives the record a remarkably wide range
of feel and emotion. However, the honed tones and prolific energy that tie them
together brand each song as an irreplaceable part of the whole.
Gish is loaded with more and spirit than an orchestra, and it
is remarkable to think that something so comprehensive was perfected in only a
few months.[2]
As was recently confirmed by Butch Vig, Billy Corgan was responsible for playing
most of the strings during the sessions,[3] and would spend “hours on
a guitar tone…or working on harmonies and textural things.”[4] While his focus certainly
makes for some incredible moments on Gish,
unfortunately, it also prevents anything from being definitively attributed to
guitarist James Iha and bassist D’Arcy Wretzky. For instance, the punchy and
violent intro to “Bury Me” remains one of my favorite bass grooves, but I
remain unsure as to who is truly responsible for breathing life into it. In the
same vein, being that Billy was the main songwriter and regularly assembled
entire songs before bringing them to the band,[5] it is hard to hear past
his signature style for any voice or influence from his bandmates.
Billy
Corgan’s dominance of the instrumentation naturally reaches into the
arrangements as well. Though his bass riffs feel natural and his guitar licks
are explosive, his tendency to overlap multiple solos (in the spirit of Tony
Iommi) gets to feel somewhat excessive after happening in almost every song.
This hedonistic layering extends itself into the rhythm guitar, which can add
to the confusion, especially in the quieter songs: the myriad riffs in
“Rhinoceros” meld together without standing out, and the atmospheric feel of
“Crush” gets squashed due to the pile of guitar sounds, including one
remarkably close to the squeal of a kazoo. Being his de facto brainchild, Gish leans heavily against the distinct
style of Billy Corgan, and though I am a true fan of his skill and taste, it occasionally
leaves me wanting for the sound of a more dynamic band.
The string
section is certainly exciting, but my favorite aspect of this record has to be
the drumming of Jimmy Chamberlin. As the sole proprietor of the throne, Jimmy
brings absolutely everything he has to his drum kit, flaunting his control of
dynamic and feel and practically stealing the show from the rest of the band.
As he constructs beat after unique beat, he finds ways to utilize virtually his
entire kit, while every single fill he flashes carries the distinct relaxation
of an improvisation. He even finds ways to squeeze in his jazz influences,[6] comping on an open snare
in “Suffer” and rolling at ridiculous speeds in “Snail.” As he drums across Gish, Jimmy Chamberlin leaves nothing of
himself behind, loading each composition with soul and wrath while asserting
his own authority as drummer of the Smashing Pumpkins.'
The
instrumentation on Gish is so complex
and multifaceted, a discussion of it could easily be turned into a
dissertation, and the lyrics are hardly different. According to Billy, many of
the songs went through twenty to thirty rewrites before recording,[7] being distilled to their
best possible form. Throughout the album, Billy avoids verbose or pretentious
language, yet manages to fill his songs with intricate references and ideas:
“Tristessa” (named after a Jack Kerouac novella of the same name) explores the
ambiguities of love,[8] while “Window Paine” is
driven by the Beat-Zen message of “Do what you gotta do / Say what you gotta
say / Do what you gotta do / Yeah, start today.”[9] And unlike with the
instrumentation, Billy has the foresight to open up the compositions by letting
D’Arcy perform some vocals as well. Her soulful, mourning performance on
“Daydream,” the record’s simplistic closer, is laden with emotion and a quiet
power that resonates with me long after the song has ended.
Though
many themes abound in the lyrics of Gish,
none is more perfectly expounded upon than those of religion and philosophy.
Many of the songs mix simple language with key religious or philosophical
phrases, thereby infusing the tunes with a more existential meaning. In “I Am
One,” Corgan introduces a Christian tone with the lines “I am one as you are three
/ Try to find messiah in your trinity,” while simultaneously questioning its
validity: “Am I as I seem?”[10] Similarly, the language
in “Suffer” holds similarities to Buddhist beliefs on enlightenment, especially
in the line “rise from the mounds of desire.”[11] Even the words in “Siva,”
a direct reference to the Hindu god,[12] find ways to flirt with
the destruction / creation cycle that Shiva represents. Billy Corgan’s artful
yet cohesive exploration of the soul affirms his assertion that Gish “is about pain and spiritual
ascension,”[13]
a transcendence that the very fabric of the music only reinforces.
Tunes to Check Out:
1) Bury Me
2) I Am One
3) Daydream
