Zwan, the new band of former Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, is pretty good.

Not unbelievably good, but definitely a nice listen. The unbelievable part is that Corgan is still capable of producing this kind of music. This is being written by someone who, from 1993 through 1995, thought the Smashing Pumpkins were the be-all, end-all of music. Gish and Siamese Dream were the best albums ever made. I must've spent upwards of $500 on bootlegs, singles, t-shirts, posters, and whatnot. My roommate Ian was forced to sleep in a room where half of the wallspace was occuppied by Billy, James Iha, D'Arcy, and Jimmy Chamberlain. I spent months searching for the "I Am One" 10", and can still recall the day i found it in the Record Finder in Noe Valley, San Francisco. The song i was hunting for, "Bullet Train to Osaka", is still my favorite b-side of all time. That being said, i have hated everything they've done since the disastrous double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Their long awaited followup to Siamese Dream, having had only the great rarities compilation Pisces Iscariot to tide me over two years, just plain stunk. My friends tried to convince me it was okay, but i could smell the mediocrity from the opening bars of "Bullet With Butterfly Wings". I didn't even buy it. The years that followed saw a rich pageantry of Pumpkins crap, climaxing with the awful indulgent whining of Machina before the band dissolved. What was a fixation for me became a source of shame.

So when i heard about Corgan's reemergence with Zwan, my initial reaction was "whoop dee friggin doo". I caught them on SNL last weekend and was mildly surprised that i wasn't driven to change the channel immediately. So i downloaded their album Mary Star of the Sea today, and what do you know? This is the album the Pumpkins should've made eight years ago. It rocks where Adore beeped. It roars where Mellon Collie whined. Whether this is attributable to Corgan or the indie superstar lineup of Zwan, including Slint and Tortoise guitarist Dave Pajo and Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney, is up for debate. But it's nice to have a reason to fondly remember my days as a Smashing Pumpkins freak.