(Rotten Apples) The Smashing Pumpkins Greatest Hits

The greatest hits collections of many bands that stuff shelves and stockings around this time of year are all too rarely worthy stuff. A marketable re-hash of platinum selling singles from a skeleton crew of albums, they hardly have any real weight of a winding career behind them. Not so the Pumpkins. From meandering to twisted the band have wound their way through 10 turmoil-filled years, losing and gaining drummers, bassists and sanity. Along the way they managed to produce six official albums with an immense total of 96 songs on them alone. And then they broke up. Righteous stuff in the Rock ‘n’ Roll tradition.

A greatest hits for this band was always going to be notoriously difficult, choosing between not just a vast selection of wonderful songs but how to get both the furious and the fairy-like songs onto one album. The choices are both populist (‘1979’, ‘Today’) and eclectic (‘Eye’ and ‘Drown’, previously available on the soundtrack to grunge scene movie Singles though sadly edited here from eight minutes to four), all blending quite seamlessly. The ‘I thought they went downhill after Siamese Dream’ crew should be silenced by the inclusion of newer, gorgeous songs such as ‘Ava Adore’ and you can’t argue with the stomping ‘Stand Inside Your Love’.

Two previously unreleased tunes close the album, though neither as good as the classics preseeding them but if you buy this early you should be able to track down a limited edition with a second CD of b-sides and rarities which makes this an essential purchase for punters and completists alike.

Oft mad and always more brilliant than not, this band, a band with a back catalogue and a history worth sifting through, have left a worthy legacy touched upon wonderfully by this collection.