West London’s Gunnersbury Park is usually a peaceful place.
Dog walkers stroll through the finely trimmed grass. Teenagers kick footballs into the surrounding shrubbery, twenty-somethings lie with friends, books, and lukewarm lagers, and children run around laughing carelessly.
But sometimes, something happens that breaks the silence of this South Ealing suburban serenity. And today, that something is The Smashing Pumpkins.
.
As worthy of the phrase ‘living legends’ as any of their stadium-sized counterparts, American alternative rockers The Smashing Pumpkins have been popping out critically lauded albums (and supermassive live shows) for the best part of thirty years.
Landing in Gunnersbury Park on a sunny Sunday evening for their biggest UK show in recent memory, Billy Corgan and co. wasted no time in getting the dystopian alt-rock party started. With a stage show reminiscent of a Tim Burton fever dream and a frontman whose aesthetic is best described as a cross between an emo priest and a Dr. Who villain, it was nigh-on impossible to be drawn in from the moment the band kicked into the opening notes of set starter ‘Glass’ Theme’.
And as for the setlist? Well, any band that’s able to launch into a bonafide classic like ‘Today’ – taken from their sophomore record, ‘Siamese Dream’ – a mere four songs into their set must be pretty confident in their ability to hold a crowd for the rest of their 90-minute-plus show.
.
And frankly, dear reader, we can’t blame them for being confident.
In a year that marks the 30th anniversary of their record ‘Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’, the band have no shortage of crowd-pleasers in their arsenal – and they duly wheel them out over the course of their Gunnersbury Park mega show. Fan favourites Today, 1979, Zero are amongst the highlights of the set, while a mildly bizarre (but ultimately brilliant) cover of Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’ serves as the night’s biggest singalong moment. So far, so bonkers, and so very Smashing Pumpkins.
.
In fact, ‘bonkers’ might be the best way to sum up this show.
Let’s face it – it’s not normal to have a band as esteemed, multi-faceted, and critically acclaimed rock up in Gunnersbury Park in the middle of August. Heck, it’s not normal for a band like that to exist at all. It’s also not exactly typical for them to be supported by acts like Skunk Anansie and White Lies – bands whose sets served as the perfect warm-up for Corgan and his squad, and who are more used to selling out their own headline shows than playing a multi-act bill like this.
And if one thing’s truly ‘bonkers’, it’s how anyone can take an otherwise uneventful green space in the middle of London and turn it into the site of a gig that everyone in attendance is, without exception, sure to class as a top-tier highlight of their summer. So, long reign The Smashing Pumpkins – alternative kings of rock, sci-fi loving showmen, and the only band we know who can plonk an Eighties power ballad in the middle of a hard-hitting alt-rock set and act like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
If that’s not a sign of legendary status, we don’t know what is.
