Smashing Pumpkins Selling Early Copies of New Album at NYC Pop-Up Store

Billy Corgan is holding an exclusive, one-day-only Smashing Pumpkins pop-up store at New York City’s Physical GraffiTea, in partnership with the frontman’s own tea house, Madame Zuzu’s. At the ongoing event – which began Monday morning at 8 a.m. and runs until 10 p.m. local time – fans can purchase limited-edition band mugs, lithographs, tea bundles and early copies of the new Pumpkins LP, Monuments to an Elegy (which will be officially released on Tuesday, December 9th).

The band previously shared three of the album’s singles: the dramatic “Tiberius,” the punk-tinged “One and All” and the lush rocker “Being Beige.” Along with guitarist Jeff Schroeder, Monuments features the work of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. For the band’s upcoming tour, Corgan recruited the Killers bassist Mark Stoermer and Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk to flesh out the lineup. 

Monuments to an Elegy follows the 2012 Pumpkins LP, Oceania, and is the latest installment of the band’s ongoing series Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. That epic song cycle will conclude with next year’s currently in-progress LP, Day for Night.

In a recent interview, Corgan discussed his competitive, but respectful, relationship with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain during the early Nineties. “In the purest sense of the word, we were competitors,” he said. “He and I were the top two scribes, and everybody else was a distant third.” While Corgan admitted that he never got along with the grunge icon, he did emphasize Cobain’s artistic integrity: “I like to think a lot of the crap music that followed wouldn’t have existed if he had been around to criticize it.”