Greetings, Readers! Musicbox 6000 (automated assistant to The Rock Father) here with an update from SMASHING PUMPKINS.
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS have unveiled the album cover artwork for their new album OCEANIA, out June 19 via Martha’s Music/EMI Label Services/Caroline Distribution. The hauntingly beautiful image (see above) was photographed by Richard Shay, son of Chicago legend Art Shay.
OCEANIA was recorded at singer/guitarist BILLY CORGAN’s private studio in Chicago with his bandmates: guitarist JEFF SCHROEDER, drummer MIKE BYRNE and bassist/vocalist NICOLE FIORENTINO. The powerful 13-song collection (see track listing below) was produced by Corgan and Bjorn Thorsrud and mixed by David Bottrill. Marking THE SMASHING PUMPKINS’ 7th studio record, it is “an album within an album,” part of their 44-song work-in-progress TEARGARDEN BY KALEIDYSCOPE.
Here’s a Q&A with CORGAN about the making of OCEANIA.
Can you talk about how the recording of ‘Oceania’ may have differed in any way from previous Smashing Pumpkins albums?
“We worked for a time in an empty movie theatre in Sedona during the winter months of early 2011, sketching out some primary versions of the songs while trying to dial in the emotional terrain we were seeking. In that kind of process it wasn’t that unusual from past records where I’d worked with a band as a unit to help me define a set of templates to work towards. We’d just come off the road, and had a good sense of what was no longer working in our eyes from a dynamic point of view. We worked hard to create space in the music, but not lose any of the emotive power that I like to have behind my songs.”
You finished ‘Oceania’ before deciding to team up with EMI Label Services/Caroline Distribution, so that would mean you were completely artistically free to create the album you wanted to make. Want to tell us about your creative mind-set during the recording?
“From a production standpoint I was dead set on making an album where every song was just as valuable as any other, ignoring the typical claptrap you hear about needing a single. The only way to make the case that every song on Oceania is worth hearing is to put your heart into the sequence as a cohesive whole. Once we felt we’d achieved that balance, only then did we let anyone outside our world hear the record we’d made. The chance to work within the EMI system again felt right to me. But unlike years in the past where I was under a set contract and beholden to a set of external forces which didn’t always fall in our favor, in this set-up they are now our partners in putting Oceania out to a wider marketplace than we could reach on our own.”
What you feel your bandmates have added to the album?
“I’ve been adamant in stressing that as a group, first and foremost, we are here to make new music together. I’m proud to say that on Oceania I feel we’ve cut our own path forward. Jeff, Mike, and Nicole have all made significant contributions to the tone and texture of Oceania, which is an album that is unlike any I’ve ever made. Yet at the same time I believe it upholds the same musical values I’ve always pushed for with The Pumpkins, be they progressive, emotional, epic, or restless.
Do you feel the recording of the album benefitted by the band having played some of these songs on the road first?
If we’ve learned anything from playing as an intact unit now for over two years, it’s that unless we create our own sound and our own legacy, it’s a given that people will default to what they know; whether it’s my past or someone else’s. We know we have much more in us to share than being an alluring, virtual jukebox. Being in The Pumpkins will always be defined by what we can create from our hands and hearts right now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
In touring news, THE SMASHING PUMPKINS were announced last week as a headliner at the Splendour in the Grass festival July 27-29 in Australia at Byron Bay’s Belongil Fields. The event is already sold-out. The band will also headline shows in Australia and New Zealand (TBA).
Here’s the OCEANIA track listing:
Quasar
Panopticon
The Celestials
Violet Rays
My Love is Winter
One Diamond, One Heart
Pinwheels
Oceania
Pale Horse
The Chimera
Glissandra
Inkless
Wildflower
About The Smashing Pumpkins:
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS have created one of the most acclaimed bodies of work in musical history having sold more than 30 million albums, and won multiple Grammy awards in the process. Formed in Chicago in 1988, they released Gish, their influential and platinum debut in 1991, which was followed by albums including the nine-time platinum Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and the four-time platinum Siamese Dream, as well as the platinum certified 1998 album Adore. The pivotal group’s many hits defined the alternative music era and continue to resonate on modern rock radio, influencing a whole new generation. The PUMPKINS returned in 2007 with their acclaimed sixth album Zeitgeist. They have since remained on the cutting edge of music and technology with various online releases.
