Smashing Pumpkins Play Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in Full in Chicago, With the Floor Seated

Smashing Pumpkins brought the Rats in a Cage Tour to Chicago’s United Center for a homecoming show split into two sets and roughly 30 songs. The first half is Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness performed in full, timed to the album’s 30th anniversary. The second mixes hits with material that has not appeared on a setlist in a decade or more, separated by a 20-minute intermission.

The concept invites skepticism, and the show answers most of it. Corgan’s voice is unchanged, nasal and immediately identifiable, and the band played with the assurance of musicians who have rehearsed this material rather than merely survived it. The strongest reactions went to the Siamese Dream songs: “Mayonnaise,” “Today,” “Cherub Rock.” Even the extended drum solo in the closer, “Superchrist,” pulled an arena’s worth of noise out of the room.

What capped the night was structural. The floor was entirely seated, a sensible arrangement for a band playing an anniversary record to an audience that has aged alongside it, and a limiting one. Corgan’s riffs landed, but the crowd had nowhere to move. That is the trade running through legacy rock touring now: comfort and sightlines in exchange for the loose communal release a mid-nineties club show allowed.

Chicago sang along through nearly all of Mellon Collie and stayed loud into the second set, even when Corgan opened it with three consecutive modern-era songs. No guests, no surprises. The setlist was the event.