Smashing Pumpkins: Earphoria : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

This collection finds the Smashing Pumpkins playing live in the early Nineties, during a period when they were creating some of the grandest guitar rock of that decade. Performances such as "I Am One," from a 1993 Barcelona show, and a long-ass version of "Silverfuck," from London in 1994, reveal four noisy, well-rehearsed musicians diving into deep recesses of hard-rock jamming. Acoustic versions of "Cherub Rock," done live for MTV Europe, and "Mayonaise" (labeled "Live Everywhere, 1988-1994"), gleam with the despondent sparkle of their melodies. Earphoria is messy at times, but it documents the kind of dynamic back-and-forth that comes along in rock very, very rarely.