The Smashing Pumpkins released Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. on November 16, 2018. Their tenth studio album reunited Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin on a Pumpkins LP for the first time since 2000, with Jeff Schroeder completing the guitar lineup. Rick Rubin produced the sessions at Shangri La Studios in Malibu, and Martha’s Music released the record under license to Napalm Records.
“Solara” had introduced that recording lineup in June 2018, ahead of the album and the band’s Shiny and Oh So Bright tour. The second single, “Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts),” followed in September.
Corgan and Iha had rebuilt their relationship before they resumed recording together. In a USA Today interview republished by the Winnipeg Free Press, Corgan said they had begun spending time together again during visits to Los Angeles. Those meetings continued over several years before they discussed working together. He described repairing the relationship as a gradual process, without revisiting every old grievance.
Even then, a full album wasn’t the initial goal. Corgan said the band spent three weeks making demos at the Village in Los Angeles with the intention of having Rubin produce one song. In Guitar Player, he explained that they had narrowed 16 demos to eight candidates. Rubin wanted to record the whole selection. That decision turned a proposed single into the material that would make up the LP.
Iha approached the heavier songs by looking for details he could add around the riffs. He explained that some tracks already had enough force, so he concentrated on small melodies and hooks that could give the guitars another dimension. Corgan heard that contribution as a softer, more psychedelic layer around the attack he and Chamberlin created. Schroeder, who had worked with Chamberlin before but hadn’t recorded with Iha, was joining that particular studio partnership for the first time.
Corgan preferred to describe the release as an LP rather than a concept album. “It’s more like a collection of eight tunes from a particular session,” he told Guitar Player. The finished record ran 31 minutes and 48 seconds. “Knights of Malta” opened with strings and choir textures, while “Marchin’ On” pushed the guitars harder. Chamberlin also shared a writing credit with Corgan on “With Sympathy”; Corgan wrote the other seven tracks.
Corgan told USA Today that the eight songs had been made in four weeks. Asked whether the musicians had revisited old Pumpkins records while making the new material, he pointed to that speed: there hadn’t been much time to sit around trying to recreate an earlier guitar sound. His account suggests a reunion shaped by the musicians’ immediate working chemistry, with relatively little time spent reconstructing their earlier records.
That recording partnership continued on Cyr in 2020. Corgan, Iha, Chamberlin and Schroeder expanded to a 20-song double album, with Corgan taking over production from Rubin.
