The Smashing Pumpkins have unveiled two new songs, ‘Cyr’ and ‘The Colour of Love’.
“Cyr is dystopic folly,” Billy Corgan explains of the track, “one soul against the world sort of stuff, set against a backdrop of shifting loyalties and sped up time. To me it stands as both hopeful and dismissive of what is and isn’t possible with faith.”
The track arrives with a special live performance, shot remotely in lockdown, split between Chicago and Los Angeles. The clip was directed by Linda Strawberry. Set to premiere at 11 pm AEST.
“This is a goth fever dream of pent up emotion – an artistic visual release attempting to create a momentary escape from the emotional black cloud hanging over all of us this year,” Strawberry explains. “A dark seduction filmed in quarantine at a social distance.”
It marks the first new material we’ve heard from the band since their 2018 Rick Rubin-produced album, Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / Lp: No Past. No Future. No Sun. The record was recorded with the lineup of founding members Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin alongside longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder.
In an interview with Tennessean Corgan revealed that the band had plans to release a double album later this year. Heralding the forthcoming record “the first real album” since the band’s reunion, a subtly snarky takedown of the band’s 2018 effort.
“This is the first album since the album that came out in 2000, Machina, where me, James [Iha] and Jimmy [Chamberlin] worked on something for a very long time,” Corgan explained.
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“It’s got a greater conceptual base, and it’s probably a wider swath of music.
“The last one was kind of like, “Let’s just jump in, record some stuff real fast, and let it be what it is… so I’m excited about this because we’re kind of back in the lane of taking a risk, and trying to bring something new to the table, as opposed to just aping what we’re known for. ”