AMERICAN PANCAKE: Not The Premiere: SMASHING PUMPKINS' Goth pop rock dystopian dream "CYR" (Official Video)

"stare down your masters"

We have all heard about the double Smashing Pumpkins album that has been dangled in front of us like a glittery carrot so it is exciting to hear the fruits of their labor. If history is repeating itself, as history is usually intent on doing, I imagine that Billy Corgan who has aged so gracefully being a chilled member of his former self has to be carrying most of the weight in terms of all the secondary compositions around each and every song, meaning the ancillary points, parts, especially other guitar parts, not that Jeff Schroeder and James Iha are not absolutely vital but I am guessing Corgan envisions his compositions just so. On the other hand, Billy, Jeff, James and the wonderful Jimmy Chamberlain on drums could be creating within the rehearsal space, I kinda hope that is the case.

I love the video for CYR as directed, edited, and colored by Linda Strawberry and it's sort of retro future made me think of Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece "Metropolis" kind of car crashed with bits of Alex Garland's "Ex Machina" and even tonally of the Wachowski's "The Matrix".
“Cyr is dystopic folly, one soul against the world sort of stuff, set against a backdrop of shifting loyalties and sped up time. To me it stands as both hopeful and dismissive of what is and isn't possible with faith.” - Billy Corgan

“This is a goth fever dream of pent up emotion – an artistic visual release attempting to create a momentary escape from the emotional black cloud hanging over all of us this year. A dark seduction filmed in quarantine at a social distance.” - Linda Stawberry.

The track itself is a mixed bag. Smashing Pumpkins purists may not appreciate the electro pop rock sound, the absence of overt guitars and the slick production. It is, in truth, a Smashing Pumpkins song that is produced as slickly as a Shania Twain pop song. The heavy quantization (which Corgan has always worked with), the sort of thump beat attitude and dreamy pristine backing female vox feel in someway feel like a post punk nullification. That being said the urgency of the beat with Chamberlain's machine drill beat and catchy 3 splash hi-hat strike....pssh, pssh, pssh is super hooky. Corgan is exquisitely the master of his instrument, and I mean his vocal instrument. He is so utterly in control and able to shape it just so and it is lush and extremely alluring here. It is done with artistic verve too. I have a feeling that it thrills him to make this song that is so un Smashing Pumpkins (of before) like. And besides, this is a track that Giorgio Moroder would be proud of. Damn it is already stuck in my brain.

-Robb Donker Curtius