It would seem that Smashing Pumpkins, who've been around for more than two decades, would have already endorsed the holiday where pumpkins reign. While the band played a Halloween show with KISS back in 1998 where they performed dressed up as The Beatles, Billy Corgan hasn't directly addressed the holiday or its spooky overtones directly, and rightly so. To do so would walk too dangerously along the line of kitsch that would be hard to recover from. For acts like Rob Zombie or Alice Cooper, for which every day is Halloween, a veneration of all things connected to All Hallows Eve is a part of the production, and product. While much of the Smashing Pumpkins' album art and concert imagery, not to mention guitar rock heaviness, might evoke a sense of "death rock" or "grunge in furs" that is most at home during the spooky season, Corgan and his band's music is more than just a trip down a misty goth rock lane. The latest album from Smashing Pumpkins, CYR, morphs their sound from a heavy "death rock" sound into an early 80s goth rock one that's loaded with synths, throbbing bass, and nary a guitar solo in earshot. The sonic landscape of CYR is more safely conducive to a dabbling in references to Halloween than their previous efforts.
