Billy Corgan's nasal whine and grandiose ambitions made the Smashing Pumpkins the most polarizing band of the nineties. You either bought into his vision of alternative rock as an epic, orchestral, multitracked cathedral of sound, or you found the whole thing insufferably pretentious. There wasn't much middle ground. James Iha's complementary guitar, D'arcy Wretzky's bass, and Jimmy Chamberlin's jazz trained drumming gave Corgan's visions a band capable of executing them.\n\nSiamese Dream was their masterpiece. layers of guitar overdubs creating a wall of sound that was simultaneously heavy and dreamy. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a 28 track double album that was either the nineties' most ambitious rock record or its most self indulgent, depending on who you asked. The answer might be both.
Key Albums
"Today," "Cherub Rock," "Quiet." A wall of overdubbed guitars creating something massive and intimate at the same time.
A sprawling double album. "1979," "Bullet with Butterfly Wings," "Tonight Tonight." The ambition is staggering.
The heavy, psychedelic debut. Rawer than what came after but already hinting at Corgan's maximalist instincts.
Why They Matter
The Smashing Pumpkins expanded alternative rock's ambitions at the exact moment grunge was defining it as minimalist and raw. Corgan's insistence on grandeur, for all its excess, pushed the genre's boundaries and produced some of the nineties' most emotionally resonant music.