by SHANE SINNOTT

This past week, two bands that used to be good have released new records: The Smashing Pumpkins and Interpol. With a certain amount of trepidation—what if the songs are good, ruining my small thesis?—I tracked down some of the new material to present here for your discerning ears.

First up are the Smashing Pumpkins, who actually haven’t been good for quite a while, since around the time when Billy Corgan shaved his head. The new album, the first since 2000, is called Zeitgeist (boo!), and you can download the track “Starz” (boo!) at tinyurl.com/2dvokw. It sounds promising at first, a lot like their guitar-heavy material from the mid-’90s, but things start to fall apart once Corgan opens his mouth, singing: “Born of love and cast in light / Don’t you know we cannot die / We are stars.” Then the cheesiness begins in earnest, culminating in simultaneous guitar and drum solos. Also, there are different versions of the album exclusive to iTunes, Best Buy and Target, so they’re not doing themselves any favours if you’re the type of person, say, that gets really irritated by stuff like that. Here’s “Cherub Rock” for old times’ sake: tinyurl.com/3y3n3p.

On to Interpol. The album is called Our Love to Admire, and you can get the song “Pace is the Trick” at tinyurl.com/2x4uf7. This is better, but partly because the previous album, Antics, was really boring. Don’t expect anything approaching Turn on the Bright Lights, the track sounds like the band doing a bad imitation of themselves, with singer Paul Banks saying stuff like “you don’t hold a candle” over and over. Better is “The Heinrich Maneuver,” which you can download at tinyurl.com/24ooem. At least there’s more going on, though it’s hard not to think they’re going primarily for airplay. All the buttons are being pushed—it’s fast, there are hooks, and it’s constantly going somewhere. In short, it’s nothing at all like the gorgeous “Untitled” from Turn on the Bright Lights, the type of stuff that made them famous in the first place: tinyurl.com/25mogl.