Chicago, IL · alt-rock

The Smashing Pumpkins

1 upcoming festival

Chicago's alt-rock monument — Mellon Collie-scale guitars at home in Grant Park, Corgan drama at full wingspan.

The Smashing Pumpkins formed in Chicago in 1988 around Billy Corgan, with James Iha, D'arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlin completing the original line-up. Their sound set layered, heavily overdubbed guitars against Corgan's thin, nasal voice, drawing on heavy metal, shoegaze and psychedelia in roughly equal measure — an approach that separated them from most of their alternative-rock contemporaries.

Gish and Siamese Dream established the band, and the 1995 double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness pushed the scale further still, spanning acoustic ballads and distorted rock singles. Adore and the Machina records followed before the group split in 2000. Corgan revived the name in 2006, and later line-ups have again included Iha and Chamberlin.

alt-rock