The much-trumpeted Smashing Pumpkins “reunion” never happened. Guitarist James Iha and bassist D’Arcy Wretzky quickly announced that they would not be involved, while the 2009 departure of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin left Billy Corgan as the only remaining original member. This hasn’t stopped him picking up from where they left off in the 90s. Like 2012’s Oceania, Monuments to An Elegy returns to the trademark Pumpkins sound. Lashings of alt-rock guitars and subtle classic rock references abound, although there are lovely tinkly keyboards on Tiberius and Being Beige chugs along on a drum machine. The standout Dorian turns up the synthesisers with a melody distantly related to the classic 1979. If the songs don’t all match the Pumpkins’ early glories, Corgan is still carrying what he once called “the infinite sadness”, investing uplifting sounds with an undercurrent of melancholy. As he puts it in the particularly affecting Drum + Fife: “I will bang this drum ’til my dying day.”
