Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan Challenges Himself With 'Teargarden by Kaleidyscope'

On Nov. 23, Smashing Pumpkins will release 'Teargarden by Kaleidyscope Vol. II: The Solstice Bare,' the second EP from their ongoing 44-song album. So far, the enormous four-year project isn't worrying Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. In fact, he tells Spinner that he works a lot better when challenged.

"If I don't take off a big enough piece to chew on, I'll get bored," Corgan says. "I thought, 'If I really shoot my mouth off here, then I'll do it.' The last time I really did that was with the 'Mellon Collie' album in the '90s. After we had this wave of success with our second album I came out and said, 'OK, we're going to do a double CD' and everyone was like, 'Are you insane?' But it really made me commit on a deeper level to my writing, to the project. I looked at this similarly."

'The Solstice Bare' follows a comparable path to the first EP, 'Songs for a Sailor,' which came out May 25 and is available on both limited edition CD and vinyl. While the four songs already debuted on the band's website for free, the release also features a new B-side, 'Cottonwood Symphony.'

If anyone is worried that Corgan will run out of steam and fall short of the 44-song mark, he swears he's good to go and hints that the eventual album may have different versions of the songs that appear online and on the EPs.

"I have more than enough songs," he says. "I'll probably write a lot more. It's such a different project than preparing for a normal album. It's interesting to write a song and come back to it a year later and have a completely new perspective from whatever you learned in that last year. I'm really enjoying that process."