The liner notes proclaim Billy Corgan’s new band, “The True Poets of Zwan.” The sheer, unabashed pretentiousness of that statement aside, one has to wonder exactly how a band with song titles such as “Yeah!” and “Baby Let’s Rock!” could possibly consider themselves poetic. It sounds a little more like Corgan has been partying with Andrew W.K. too much.
Zwan is Smashing Pumpkins on Zoloft. The rabid happiness of Mary Star of the Sea, Zwan’s first offering, stands in stark contrast to the brooding, angry sentiment of its members’ previous bands, which include Smashing Pumpkins, Chavez, and Slint. Even the artwork is sickeningly sweet, full of birds, rainbows, hillside scenes, and so many colors that it looks like it’s moving towards you. More shocking, however, is the lack of any variety or musical direction in the songs. With five talented musicians in the band, it seems fair to expect more than the Brady Bunch-esque songs they wrote.
Happy love songs abound here, as do religious tracks such as “Declarations of Faith,” which, given Corgan’s previous lyrical work, are somewhat hard to swallow, coming from someone who once wrote lyrics like “Love is suicide” and “God is empty just like me.”
Billy Corgan’s nasal whine does not lend itself well to this type of sugar-coated pop, nor does his classic method of assaulting listeners with as many guitar overdubs as he can fit on tape, set against former Pumpkin Jimmy Chamberlin’s prolific drumming. These tricks may have worked for Smashing Pumpkins, but this sort of music would benefit more from a stripped-down sound. Zwan actually has three guitarists, so it’s rare that the dynamic ever shifts from loud to soft. When it does, in songs like “Heartsong,” Zwan suddenly begins to make a lot more sense. Such moments are short-lived. Much like a hyperactive child, Corgan simply can’t show restraint and be quiet for a couple minutes.
“Heartsong” is followed by “Endless Summer,” which is as lyrically vapid as it sounds (How’s this for true poetry: “Summer, summer, summer, yeah!”), but musically, one of the most engaging tracks on the album.
The centerpiece of the album is “Jesus, I/Mary Star of the Sea,” a fifteen minute medley combining a Zwan original with a traditional spiritual song. While the instrumental section that separates the two songs is certainly a welcome break from Corgan’s voice, the song eventually spirals down into an extended jam session that does little more than make the listener wonder, Just how long is this, anyway?
Every misstep the album takes, lyrically and musically, is added up and spit out in digest form with “Come With Me,” a country-tinged accident that contains what may just be the most egregious misuse of harmonicas ever committed to tape. Here, it is painfully obvious that Billy Corgan has truly run out of things to write about, resorting to “Come with me/Stay the night/Stay all your life.”
While there are only a few outright bad songs on Mary Star of the Sea, there are even fewer good ones. Much of the album is forgettable, and the parts that aren’t sound like old Smashing Pumpkins material. It might be advisable to just listen to a Pumpkins CD instead. You’ll get fewer cavities that way.