Truly, the Smashing Pumpkins were one of the great alternative rock bands of the 90s. With their characteristic blend of angst, distortion squalls and delicate-- whoa, whoa, hold on a minute. Is that "Live at the L.A. Coliseum" flyer really the cover? Look at that thing! Is that Billy's First Photoshop?! Well, now I've completely lost my train of thought. But in a way, that cover concisely sums up my anticipation of Zwan, an enterprise so gleefully out-of-step with the present, so misguidedly earnest, so just plain wrong.

Questionable artwork aside, fans have high hopes for Mary, Star of the Sea, for a number of reasons. Last summer, Zwan's lineup was revealed to include two of indie rock's finest guitarists-- Slint's Dave Pajo and Matt Sweeney of Chavez-- alongside A Perfect Circle bassist Paz Lenchantin and Pumpkins powerhouse Jimmy Chamberlin on drums. Soon after, barely audible bootleg MP3s began to pop up on file-trading networks. Through the tape hiss and crowd noise, traces of actual jangly guitar were audible, and the tone of their promising advance single "Honestly" confirmed this, suggesting a sort of alternate-dimension Smashing Pumpkins where Corgan interpreted the success of "1979" not as a mandate from the people to "go gothic", but to continue flogging the guitar-crunch cheer of "Today". But this was just an advance single, and as singles have misled us in the past, the question remains: Has Billy really discarded the goth-rock fantasies and digital overprocessing of MACHINA and reverted to the glorious mid-90s anthems he built his name on?

He has, indeed. His black mumu is back in the attic where it belongs, indicating that, if nothing else, he's on the right track. But Corgan is not a man to half-ass anything, and Zwan being his Fresh Start, he's gone about it with a keen sense of calculation. Corgan's ego won't be sated simply by mainstream success: With Zwan, he aims to reclaim the ground he's been steadily losing since the release of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Platinum-selling records, critical acclaim and long-standing credibility are clearly at the fore. What he's won himself by reconfiguring his lineup to include icons of indie rock and goth-metal was another shot with each of those audiences. Unfortunately, this seems to have been his wisest move with Zwan.

So where did Billy go wrong? Zwan's sound, thanks to Corgan's distinctive guitar tone and Jimmy Chamberlin's He-Man drumming, feels right out of Butch Vig's board circa 1993, so you can't really fault that. And since the album's balance between loud rockers and delicate ballads is virtually identical to the first two Smashing Pumpkins albums, it can't be blamed on a lack of cohesion, either. The problem lies with the songs themselves, which simply lack outstanding or memorable hooks: Most are content to meander behind a curtain of big rock guitars and bigger rock cliches, infinitely repeating themselves or, in some cases, never saying much of anything at all. Others are just clouded by bad judgment: "Desire" desperately courts the MOR contingent with a homogenous pillaging of the Goo Goo Dolls' back catalog, while the signature 14-minute suite, disasterously titled "Jesus, I", grates where past epics surged. This, by the way, is coming from a guy who thinks "For Martha" is one of Adore's best tracks.

How fare Sirs Pajo and Sweeney? Not terribly well, but not necessarily through any fault of their own. Despite their distinctive styles, pinpointing their contributions to Mary, Star of the Sea is exceedingly difficult, indicating that they've met a similar fate to that of poor old D'arcy and James Iha, who rarely escaped overdubbing on Pumpkins albums. Sweeney is, in fact, nowhere to be found, though I swear I can hear Pajo's textured noodling a couple times, when the fray lets up. Yet, before he even has a chance to step up and prove himself, his soloing is abruptly blown out of the mix by Corgan's guitar histrionics.

Chamberlin, meanwhile, proves that being a skilled drummer doesn't make you a multi-dimensional one-- where he once served as the massive backbone that forced the band's posture into confident uprightness, he fails to display even a modicum of that invention here, relying on the occasional fancy fills and flourishes to embellish his standard metronomic timekeeping. And Paz Lenchantin seems to have been drafted solely for the occasional harmony vocal, yet remains stationed in the mix about 300 feet below Corgan's pinched larynx. Which is all but infallible proof that this new "band" is but another elaborate solo project on which Corgan is backed by what amounts only to glamorized session musicians.

But how bad is Mary, Star of the Sea, really? The catch is, it's not bad at all; just overwhelmingly mediocre. Obviously, there'll be people-- devout Corganites, nine-to-fivers craving synapse triggers for their high school years, impressionable 13-year-olds-- that eat this album up, if only for moments like the big-big build-up in "Declarations of Faith" or the bells-fortified "Endless Summer". But despite the anticipation with which I approached it, despite my affinity for Corgan-rock from Gish through The Aeroplane Flies High, and despite that weathered Siamese Dream t-shirt sharing closet space with my old flannels and shredded jeans, I am, to my great disappointment, not one of them.

Don't cry for me; this record marks a particularly sad moment for Corgan himself. Here he is, so uncomfortable amidst the feedback therapy of his old sound, longing to return to that one great moment that's forever passed. At this point, he'd re-grow the sandy blonde curls in a heartbeat if given the means-- judging from the "Honestly" video, he tried and it just came out his lip. The fact remains that Corgan's ambitions have only become loftier and more unattainable with the passage of time, and you can't make a grand artistic statement like Mellon Collie without the attention and respect of the public. To its credit, Mary, Star of the Sea is a great deal less bombastic and pretentious a statement than MACHINA, but it is a statement nonetheless-- one that begs, "Don't bury me, I'm not dead."

-Ryan Schreiber, January 31st, 2003