Prime 90s era Smashing Pumpkins were one of the fiercest and most thrilling rock bands on the planet, a perfect alchemy of hard-hitting riffs, avalanching drums and explosive choruses. But what made Billy Corgan & co. one of the most dynamic bands of the decade was that they perfectly balanced their rock feistiness with a sublime selection of more mellow and ambient cuts. Yes, they also had a selection of songs in their arsenal that were amped-up mid-tempo classics (the majestic Mayonaise being the best of that bunch) but sometimes they were at their most resplendent when they didn’t rock at all – perhaps Billy Corgan and James Iha’s arsenal of volcanic distortion pedals needed a little rest sometimes.
Those songs make a fascinating alternative song history to the Pumpkins catalogue. A scroll through the tracklisting to their 2001 Best Of Rotten Apples or any of the picks that feature on streaming platform playlists would have you thinking any diversion into softer material was an aberration. The truth is there’s a whole other band there waiting to be discovered. Anyone who saw the band at one of the half and half Mellon Collie… shows in 1996, where they split the gig into an acoustic section and a rocky section, will testify to what an affecting band they could be when stripping things back, making it all the more galling that somehow they never did an MTV Unplugged session.
