Smashing Pumpkins return with new singles 'Cyr' and 'The Colour of Love' | NME

After teasing an impending announcement with countdown clocks earlier this month, Smashing Pumpkins have returned with new singles ‘Cyr’ and ‘The Colour of Love’.

It’s the first new music from the alt-rock icons since 2018 album ‘Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun’, which saw frontman Billy Corgan reunite with former bandmates James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin.

Coinciding with the new singles, the band have confirmed a new album is on the way, featuring the current lineup of Corgan, Iha, Chamberlin and guitarist Jeff Schroeder. Both songs were produced by Corgan himself in Chicago.

Stream both tracks below:

“‘Cyr’ is dystopic folly,” commented Corgan in a press release. “One soul against the world sort of stuff, set against a backdrop of shifting loyalties and sped up time. To me it stands as both hopeful and dismissive of what is and isn’t possible with faith.”

Earlier this year, Corgan revealed that he and the band had 21 songs ready to go for a “pretty different” album. He later confirmed that sessions had begun in Nashville, and said the record would be arriving at some point in 2020.

Back in May, the band’s guitarist Jeff Schroeder revealed that Corgan was working on two separate Smashing Pumpkins albums.

Speaking about the first new album earlier this year, Corgan said: “This is the first album since the album that came out in 2000, ‘Machina’, where me, James and Jimmy worked on something for a very long time. It’s got a greater conceptual base, and it’s probably a wider swath of music.”

In a four-star review of ‘Shiny and Oh So Bright’ back in 2018, NME described the album as “a showcase of songcraft that’s allowed to breathe and reveal itself. Bring on volume two. The dream lives on.”