Featured new albums: Smashing Pumpkins, cover albums, Mumford and Sons, and more

With the reunion of four original members of Smashing Pumpkins, the band released their 10th and first album with guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin since 2000’s Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music. Recorded in Malibu, California, the eight tracks on the typically wordy titled Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun., represent the briefest album the band has released to date.

https://open.spotify.com/album/43Ov5N3lHVLZj8sUpFvihN?si=BcL73hVvQneAtnDnOBcUNw

The Billy Corgan-led Chicago group currently does not have any East Coast tour dates scheduled.

 

Mark Knopfler’s solo career long ago surpassed in quantity of output the brief six-album run he had with his most famous gig as leader of the English rock band, Dire Straits. With Down The Road To Wherever, we’ve now got his ninth album, which was recorded in Knopfler’s studio in West London and sprawls across 71 minutes.

Knopfler’s world tour won’t make its way to the United States until the summer of next year, where he’ll make a stop at the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia in August.

 

Illinois-bred/Brooklyn-based indie musician Ryley Walker follows up his fifth studio album, Deafman Glance, released earlier this year, with the strange decision to cover Dave Matthews Bands’ unreleased The Lillywhite Sessions in its entirety. Walker talked about the decision and his Dave Matthews fandom in a recent episode of the Celebration Rock Podcast.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4PUmLDHOz5M2CxUo78gvJg?si=SR-9dgXlReS6cbszgLbCtQ

Walker is currently on tour supporting both albums, with a scheduled show at Boot and Saddle in December.

 

Other albums out today we’re willing to give a listen:

Rhett Miller follows his week-old solo album with an album of original Christmas songs from his alt-country rock band, The Old 97s. Love The Holidays includes song classic Christmas songs as bonus tracks.

Mumford and Sons return with an hours worth of British folk rock on Delta. Their follow-up to 2015’s Wilder Mind was led by the single, “Guiding Light.”

John Mellencamp’s cover album, Other People’s Stuff, includes a mix of songs like “The Wreck of the Old 97,” made famous by Johnny Cash, the Janis Ian-penned “To The River,” and the album’s single, traditional tune “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.”

The previously unnamed supergroup of British musicians, The Good, The Bad & The Queen return with a second album said to be inspired by Brexit, Merrie Land.