Smashing Pumpkins are one of the most prolific bands around — they just released ATUM, a 33-track rock opera — but they have even more music we haven’t heard. During a takeover of SiriusXM’s Lithium, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin revealed that the band recorded both a psychedelic album and a Christmas album during the COVID-19 shutdown that no one’s heard.
“Over the pandemic, I have a studio at my house,” Chamberlin said. “Billy has a studio at his house. We live 20 minutes away. We’re not neighbors, but we’re really close to each other. We can get to each other’s houses very quickly. We recorded close to 80 songs over the pandemic.”
Chamberlin continued, “So we did the CYR record. We had a psychedelic record that we had on a back burner that we never got to. We recorded that. We did a Christmas record that we’d never gotten to, and then we did the three, the ATUM, the 33 song, which was the capper. I was like, ‘Oh my God, please let it be over. Right?’”
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“But, no, it was great. I mean, you don’t get those big blocks of time anymore. You’re always either on tour, you’re doing stuff like this. You’re being pulled in a million different directions. So COVID was, we figured out that this could be the only point in time where we have a year or even two years to just simply create music without any logistic constraints on the process.”
It doesn’t look like Smashing Pumpkins have any plans to release the Christmas album, but hey, we have no shortage of music to pore over. Corgan even paid off a hacker to prevent ATUM from being leaked early, so the finished product is likely as immersive and grandiose as Smashing Pumpkins’ best work.
Later this year, the band will embark on “The World is a Vampire Tour” alongside Interpol and Stone Temple Pilots. Tickets are available here.