..All that matters is that Corgans alt.rock project is called “The Smashing Pumpkins” and everyone but him is, in the style of secret commando missions, expendable. “Zeitgeist” is a rock mission to the death, and casualties are necessary to win the artistic war.

As a reunion, The Smashing Pumpkins exist in name only. With Billy Corgan the sole constant throughout the band’s career, “Zeitgeist” sees Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain try to overcome disappointing sales of recent years with an act of elusive rebranding. Iha, D’Arcy and Melissa Auf De Mer are all silently absent.

In many ways this feels like another Corgan solo album but under the Pumpkins name : “The Future Embrace”, and Zwan (in which Corgan and Chamberlain were both members, making Zwan as much the Pumpkins as this lineup), both appeared to have disappointing sales. In some ways, this apparently cynical renaming has been entirely successful : column inches, and sales have been fairly vibrant. On the strength of this record though, it is not entirely convincing.

“Zeitgeist” is, for a start, a little misnamed. Nothing about it appears to capture the spirit of these times : for a record so named, I was expecting an apocalyptic epic of political collapse, world crisis, and songs from broken homes. Only the suitably topical sleeve, seems to match or meet the title. And despite attempts to escape his own shadow, Corgan can’t leave the orbit of his legacy – trapped forever as the shaven headed haunted monochrome demon boy of self-doubt and loathing. Instead, he reverts to clichéd type.

Take away all the preconceptions and “Zeitgeist” is… an OK rock album. Each Pumpkins album had it’s own distinctive sound and feel and this is no different. The compelling dynamics of previous albums is absent. “Doomsday Clock” should be a maelstrom counting down to the end of the world – instead Corgan bemoans that “it’s lonely at the top”. “7 Shades of Black” follows a similar path, Corgan again analysing the minuate of relationships and human dynamics instead of the fate of this shitball rock that annually orbits a giant fire hanging in the sky.  There’s nothing on this record as grab-your-balls brilliant or memorable as material of old. (“Starz” meanwhile is nothing more than a pale facsimile of Metallica’s “The Thing That Should Not Be”).

It doesn’t quite convince though : it sounds like Billy Corgan wrote a set of songs trying to sound like The Smashing Pumpkins as opposed to where his muse may take him : the evidence glimpsed on his solo album and Zwan show that his heart may not necessarily be in this. There’s something this material lacks – the sense that these songs had to be written, that Billy is lost to the muse - and instead now he appears to control it as if it were a performing seal he can pull out of the bag to tempt success and money. Which is a great shame. Reverting to old tricks and not exploring new avenues seems a retrograde step, especially when the material is fundamentally not up to the standards of old. It’s good. But The Pumpkins weren’t just good. Sometimes they could be great – and that’s what’s missing here.

“Zeitgeist” is not a bad album by any standards, but it simply does not maintain the high standard of the Pumpkins past oeuvre. It’s undoubtedly more accessable than his insular solo album – primarily because it sounds a lot more like a band than one man heremetically sealed away from the rest of the world. However, “Zeitgeist” in not the cure for what ails modern rock nor is it a stunning return to form for the Pumpkins. It’s good. But merely good isn’t good enough.

NOTE: Minus points are also awarded for the Pumpkins confusing array of different formats : to own every song on the various versions of the album, you have to buy six different formats (4 CD’s, each with a different ‘bonus’ track from a different retailer, the iTunes download and the Japanese edition).

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