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http://www.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/08085856762043fecd617cf7282b3f0df0629714.jpg Earphoria

Smashing Pumpkins

Earphoria

Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
5 3 0
November 19, 2002

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.

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