Weezer and Smashing Pumpkins Birmingham review - Contrasting bands have life's strangeness covered in triumphant fashion

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Peter Ormerod reviews Weezer and The Smashing Pumpkins at the Utilita Arena, Birmingham

It's an odd pairing, at first glance: two bands seemingly at opposite ends of the alt-rock spectrum. Weezer, peppy, preppy, sometimes even poppy, are followed on this tour by The Smashing Pumpkins, an altogether more enigmatic and tortured proposition. These flavours really might not go together.

But it all works remarkably well, perhaps in part because of that contrast. Between them, the bands have pretty much all of life covered: Weezer do the banality, mundanity, mild disappointment, minor regret, rueful laughter; Smashing Pumpkins do the drama, rage, majesty, angst, self-loathing, self-glorification, beauty.

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Two bands, two planes of existence, all on one night: who could ask for more?

Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.
Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.

Weezer are up first on this tour, and they are precisely as one might hope they would be. In a way, that's not surprising: they've been at this for 30-odd years, so they should have it nailed by now.

But it's that ageing that makes the triumph more remarkable: they carry this stuff off as if they're still awkward twentysomethings. It seems unlikely that frontman Rivers Cuomo really still has "a Dungeon Master's Guide" and a "12-sided die" in his garage, but you believe it when he sings it. "I'm dumb, she's a lesbian / I thought I had found the one," he confesses in Pink Triangle, from 1996; "We were good as married in my mind / But married in my mind's no good."

This was, what, last week? The fear of ageing expressed in The Good Life meanwhile now sounds a touch poignant: its nostalgia for the excesses of youth sounded funny when first sung in the 1990s, but it hits differently today.

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A lot of these songs are utterly bulletproof three-minute marvels; Pink Triangle alone has about 17 indelible hooks. There wasn’t much chat with the audience, nor a great deal of movement, but that's part of the point; and there's just enough slacker sensibility to save it from becoming too arch and stiff. They have the good sense to end with Buddy Holly; they really must be tiring of it by now, but it doesn't show, and sometimes there's nothing wrong with giving the crowd what they want.

Kiki Wong making her debut with The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.Kiki Wong making her debut with The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.
Kiki Wong making her debut with The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.

Not that The Smashing Pumpkins care too much about that. “I don’t play any songs I don’t want to play,” frontman Billy Corgan told Kerrang this month. “I don’t care if they’re classic or not.” It was, to begin with, fearsome and rather charmless stuff, Corgan icy and Mephistophelian.

Only three songs in, they chucked in a curious cover of the U2 song Zoo Station, to general bafflement; it was difficult to feel any sense of momentum building here.

But then proceedings were lifted considerably by a glorious chiming and melodic Today; the clouds parted, if only to reveal a strange moonlit sky, and from there on all was well. (Or as well as it could ever be: one of their biggest songs goes “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage”.)

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There was a bit of unevenness, possibly owing to it being the first night of the tour: Tonight, Tonight, one of their greatest works, was oddly underpowered and undefined.

Weezer on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.Weezer on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.
Weezer on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.

But the energy was undeniable: Jimmy Chamberlin is simply one of the world's greatest rock drummers, and such was his velocity and power that it felt at times like the rest of the band were strapped to the engine of a bullet train.

Guitarist Kiki Wong, in her first gig with the band, acquitted herself with force and precision; fellow guitarist James Iha, who was there at the start, brought a welcome warmth.

To the casual fan, the set perhaps leaned a bit too heavily on their recent project Atum – essentially a triple-album – but then the casual fan was also rewarded with devastating performances of Disarm, Ava Adore, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979 and numerous other anthems of dark splendour. And Corgan seemed to relax considerably as the show wore on: it turns out he can be a twinkly little charmer.

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They ended with Zero. “Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness / And cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty / Just like me.” It reads as depressing: it’s actually weirdly exhilarating and life-affirming.

The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.
The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.

And it is a reminder that these two bands actually share something quite fundamental: an embrace of the misfit.

Whether it is the more stereotypical geekiness of Weezer of the troubled outsider vibe of Smashing Pumpkins, both give a sense of welcome to those who might customarily find themselves unwelcome.

They work well together because they are different, and also because they are at heart the same, and also because they just have a lot of great songs.

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Of course, for many, there will be a degree of nostalgia to all this, but both bands sound perfectly current and in the moment: this is not a night of glorified karaoke, but a demonstration of the timeless values of top-notch songwriting and wholehearted performance.

The primary colours of Weezer, the pastel hues of The Smashing Pumpkins: what a picture they make.

The Weezer setlist can be found here

The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.
The Smashing Pumpkins on stage at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Friday, June, 7, 2024. Photo by David Jackson.

The Smashing Pumpkins setlist can be found here

Visit ticketmaster.co.uk/smashing-pumpkins-and-weezer-tickets/artist/5435149 for details of future tour dates and to buy tickets

This article was amended to remove a suggestion that James Iha had been a continuous member of The Smashing Pumpkins; he was absent from the band for a number of years.

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