The first Smashing Pumpkins album was Gish, a grand, furious album full of expansive guitar solos and other indulgences that underground rockers were supposed to disavow. Corgan's airy, supple voice spilled out in wisps and bursts, often matching the shifting sounds of the guitar; one of his... 

 Siamese Dream was even grander, prettier and more atmospheric than Gish: Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin toned down his funk backbeats, letting the bumblebee swarms of guitar notes drive the fuzzy songs forward. And Corgan wrote a batch of songs that captured something more disquieting than sadness: the... 

 After the success of Siamese Dream, the band threw hard-core fans (and perhaps impatient record executives) a bone with Pisces Iscariot, a compilation of B-Sides and demos. It's uneven by design, but there's plenty to amuse the faithful including "Blew Away," a Beatles-damaged ballad su... 

 Of course nothing says "fuck you" like a sprawling double album, so Corgan got to work, and in 1995 the band released Melon Collie & the Infinite Sadness, two CDs that gave Corgan plenty of space to embrace, renounce, and mock his new reputation as rock's most self-pitying swaggerer. (Th... 

 And then something went wrong. The band split with Chamberlin and recorded Adore, a single-disc album that felt twice as long as Melon Collie, full of overlong atmospheric songs that never got going.  

 Chamberlin returned for Machina/The Machines of God, a return to form that wasn't: The arrogance and dreaminess of the best Smashing Pumpkins albums were gone, replaced by lukewarm tunes and oddly straightforward songwriting.  

 In 2001, Corgan recruited a group of alt-rock veterans (including Chamberlin) and formed the short-lived Zwan, which produced a surprisingly strong album called Mary Star of the Sea before disbanding. Finally, in 2007, the Pumpkins were resurrected–sort of. The bombastic Zeitgeist was performed...