A review will be posted for each song from the Smashing Pumpkins’ new album,Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, as they are released. For an overview of the project and a complete index of song reviews, click here.
On the same day that “A Stitch in Time,” the third (and, by a sizeable margin, best) song from Teargarden by Kaleidyscope was released, the new issue of Rolling Stone arrived in my mailbox (yes, I still get Rolling Stone, although I’m not quite sure why) with a profile on Billy Corgan called “Rock God, Interrupted.” Brian Hiatt took the “formerly beloved guitar god overcomes great personal crisis and finds redemption through music” angle, and although he makes a valiant effort to paint the Bald One in a sympathetic light, all the article did was sum up everything I hate about post-2000 Billy. He dodged questions about Jessica Simpson and Tila Tequila, continued to blame Jimmy Chamberlain and James Iha (rather than his own megalomania) entirely for the Pumpkins’ original demise, and dropped lines like “Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do.”
However misguided Billy’s thinking is, especially on the subject of his band, that is what powers his existence in 2010, and as such, it is easy to read “A Stitch in Time” as a commentary on his own artistic struggle. “Don’t let them lay their trips on you,” he sings at one point, and it’s hard not to view this as a shot at Chamberlain. The song’s chorus (“You’re everywhere at once but you can’t break free”) seems to be referring to his struggle to redefine his music as independent of his legendary band. This, obviously, is a battle Corgan will not win as long as he continues to put out music under the name “Smashing Pumpkins.”
But here’s the catch: “A Stitch in Time” is, straight-up, the most musically appealing thing Billy has written since the original Pumpkins’ breakup. He must have remembered that some of his best work in the ’90s was Adore and the less well-known ballads on Mellon Collie, because he wisely shifts gears away from the Zeppelin-meets-“Zero” territory of the first two Teargarden tracks. The song’s lush but stripped-down arrangement makes a clear run at “Disarm,” but its ultra-clean production still puts it closer to Zeitgeist than Siamese Dream. Luckily, this time that Zeitgeist comparison is aimed at that album’s understated and unfortunately overlooked back half. The Pumpkins songs “Stitch” has the most in common with are the underappreciated Zeitgeist tracks “Neverlost” and “Bring the Light.” This is the kind of song Billy should be writing more of: simple and to-the-point, pleasantly melodic, and not murdered by over-arranging. At this point, I only really listen to “A Song for a Son” and “Widow Wake My Mind” when a new Teargarden song comes out and I need to refresh my memory. But this one I might actually go back to on my own, which is about as much as I had any right to hope for from the present-day Pumpkins.
