Here’s one way to hook in exasperated fans: after a decade of disappointing and underperforming albums, draw parallels between your new record and your golden era. When Billy Corgan described Smashing Pumpkins’ 13th studio album as something that “very much sounds like the Siamese Dream/Mellon Collie version of the band” and promised that “old-school fans would be happy, for once”, interest was undoubtedly piqued.
In truth, anything that followed the 138-minute Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts – a trilogy that was as self-important and overblown as its title suggested – would be an improvement. Corgan and his bandmates, now a trio after the departure of the guitarist Jeff Schroeder – can only trade off bygone glories for so long, which makes their willingness to delve into their past for inspiration both confusing and intriguing.
It’s just as well that Aghori Mhori Mei (a vague title that some fans have guessed alludes to an unknown Sanskrit or Hindu phrase) lives up to expectations, for the most part. The surging, snarling Edin is an enjoyably propulsive rock opener with an undercurrent of menace and predictably pompous lyrics such as “Indeed, I dream / Indeed I think I dream / Indeed, I die.”
There is sufficiently strident rock riffage threaded through the tracklist, as heard on the Ace of Spades-style blitz of War Dreams of Itself, the chugging Pentagrams and the strident Sighommi, but Corgan and co balance it with more considered fare. Pentecost softens the tracklist with synthy, emotive balladry, although Murnau, the proggy, string-laden closer, is one of the few truly questionable tracks.
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Elsewhere, the wistful midtempo bounce of Goeth the Fall is a highlight, recalling Pumpkins classics such Disarm or 1979, while Who Goes There undoubtedly harks back to the mid-1990s alt-rock sound that Corgan alluded to.
After years of disappointing releases, long-term fans will undoubtedly recognise this album as a return to form. Casual observers may be harder to win around, but there’s enough to keep the curious returning for another listen, nonetheless. Nostalgia, it seems, is a hell of a seduction technique.
