Kicking off with two dramatic drumrolls that swell into a symphony of multiracked guitar, the Smashing Pumpkins' second album captures the moment when alternictive rock picked itself up out of grunge' gutter and began looking at the stars. Driven by what vocalist/guitarist Billy Corgan described as "this great pressure to make the next album set the world on fire," the Pumpkins locked themselfs in the studio and turned tension about who was in control of the band (and Corgan's inner torment)into a slick but sonically adventurous plea to the punk scene to "Let me out," as an a line from the hit single "Cherub Rock" puts it. "That song was a knife in the back to the whole indiepurism thing," says Garbage's Butch Vig, who produced the album with Corgan. "Billy was trying to get at the idea that those people were hypocrites who were just afraid of great records. And not just in terms of lyrics-the album's grandiose production was a kind of 'fuck you' too."
The slacker world didnt take the insult lying down: Pavement mocked the Pumpkins' quadruple-platinum success a year later on the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain song "Range Life" ("I dont understand what they mean/ and I dont give a fuck"), and there were reports Corgan used his leverage as a 1994 Lollapalooza headliner to bar them from the tour (he has denied this). "Pavement does not write emotional, personal music," he said later that year. "When you see me, when you hear me, you're getting the warts and the beautiful. I'm not hiding anything." Perhaps, but full disclosure has rarely had such tender beauty or dramatic scope. Robert Levine