Smashing Pumpkins have announced a new vinyl reissue of their second album Siamese Dream. The Chicago band’s influential record will be back on shelves this April, on 180-gram black vinyl complete with original 1993 packaging.
After releasing 1991 debut Gish, Smashing Pumpkins—frontman Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha, bassist D’arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin—had a lot to live up to. They were widely hyped as the next big thing in a post-Nirvana alt-rock landscape—per Corgan, he felt intense pressure to “make the next album to set the world on fire.”
The record was primarily produced by Garbage drummer Butch Vig and Corgan themselves, and achieved a layered, wall of sound effect—some songs use up to 32 separate guitar tracks. The duo meticulously gathered takes from admittedly fraught recording sessions in Marietta, Georgia. While they were making the album, Chamberlain was struggling with heroin addiction, Wretzky and Iha had recently ended a romantic relationship, and Corgan was in the depths of a suicidal depression.
When all was said and done, Corgan played almost all of the instruments on the final album recording—he and Vig would often work 16-hour days for weeks on end to perfect the sound. Today, Siamese Dream is regarded as one of the best alt-rock records of its age—it also received critical acclaim upon release, debuting at number 10 on the Billboard 100 and catapulting the group to mainstream success. It has been certified 4x platinum by the RIAA, and received a large-scale reissue in 2011.
“In 1992, with the weight of a perceived world on our shoulders, we disappeared into a parking garage to write the songs that would change the course of our lives forever,” Corgan shared of the record in a 2011 interview “Siamese Dream represents all of our dreams coming true, while the dreams of a happy band fell apart.”
Order Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream on vinyl now.
