Rhinoceros

from the LP Gish, Caroline Records, 1991



Ah, when I listen to this work of genius it really makes me pine for the days when Billy Corgan still had hair and the Smashing Pumpkins fucking ruled the rock universe; you know, way back before Mr. Corgan became a megalomaniac, proceeding to make crapier and crapier albums until the original (and in my opinion, only) lineup broke apart. What the fuck man, why do so many great ones turn out like that?!? It must be said however, that a lustrous song like this one makes it very easy for me to forget what a douchebag he’s become, instead being helplessly seduced for the millionth time by the magic these four individuals were able to conjure. Yes, as it’s been noted before and is still proclaimed often around the greater Chicago area, the Pumpkins surely borrowed a bit from the sound of fellow-Chicagoans Hum---you know what? The Pumpkins did it way better, and wound up creating something which is far more identifiable and, in my opinion, more memorable than what Hum produced (not to take away from Hum, because I also think they rock). This song fades in gently, like a drifting cloud, reserved drumming and simplistic bassline; the more psychedelic, atonal washes of guitar between the verses remind me quite a bit of the opening to Pink Floyd’s “Speak to Me/Breath”. The words are fittingly trippy and cryptic, “…planned a show, trees and balloons; ice cream snow, see you in June…” It’s all very dreamlike and eerily beautiful until about halfway through the track when the Pumpkins show us their teeth, bursting into a loose and heavy bridge, punctuated by a smoking guitar solo and a general swell of prog-like epic-ness. Amidst the tornado of layered and processed guitars erupts a specific riff which plays us out right before the coda; it begins at 5:16, as Corgan finishes chanting, “…she knows and she knows and she knows…”. This anthemic riff is not difficult, per se, but it peels off the guitar and out of the speakers so effortlessly my heart races faster every time I’m blaring this at loud volume. The extended coda of feedback and phasing-insanity at the end of the track almost feels like a prediction of the success-maelstrom which awaited them not far after this album was released. It’s easy to dismiss the later half of the Pumpkins discography, and everything else Corgan has touched (including the half-assed lineup he toured with under the original moniker last year), as rubbish; but for a moment there in the early ‘90s, the Smashing Pumpkins could do no wrong!