Arts & Entertainment

Out with melancholy, enter the Zwan

By Bridget Brown
The Daily Cougar

After selling more than 22 million albums with his band, The Smashing Pumpkins, something surprising happened to Billy Corganis music. It got happy. The time has come for change. Bring in the music of Zwan.

"We set out to make the loudest rock and roll album that was humanly possible," Billy Corgan said in a message on the bands official Web site, Zwan.com.

Mary Star of the Sea is modeled after the compressed excitement of such bands as The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks. Everything on the album was distorted by Billy Corgan himself. On the Web site Corgan noted that no detail was too small.

Zwan features The Pumpkinsi Jimmy Chamberlin, on drums, the vocal stylings of Billy Corgan, Paz Lenchantin on bass, David Pajo and Matt Sweeny also on guitars. Some would think that Jimmy Chamberlinis drum techniques and Billy Corganis nasal voice would produce a sound too close to The Smashing Pumpkins to be considered unique, but this couldnit be farther from the truth. Throw in Sweeny from the legendary Skunk, Lenchantic from A Perfect Circle and David Pajo of Tortoise and the sound evolves to bright, dreamy, hopeful and full of confidence. This is an album to fall in love to. 

"Itis almost as if Corgan broke up the Pumpkins to experience this feeling again: the sound of a hungry band on the way up … a new band that walks the path of all great rock ‘ni roll," Chicago Interactive said on Zwan.com.

Mary Star of the Sea uses everything in the digital domain but the kitchen sink to push the music of Zwan away from todayis mainstream.

On the song "Baby Letis Rock," Corgan sings "Baby Iim the greatest thing that youive got/ I suppose in a good way." The same kind of heartfelt sentiment is on the track "Honestly:" "Cause there's no place that I could be without you/ it's too far to discard the life I once knew/ honestly, all the weather storms are bringing are just a picture of my dreams."

Mary Star of the Sea is an intimate portrayal of what it feels like to be human and in love with life. Thank God, a band has finally made it OK to be optimistic. 

Corgan summed it up best in his instructions for listeners on Zwan.com. "So crank it up, and sit back and enjoy what it sounds like for us on stage in the overdriven glory," he said. Thank you Billy and Zwan for saving the world one song at a time.

Mary Star of the Sea

Zwan

Reprise Records

The verdict: Please, cheer up, buy this record and rock it hard.
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