Review: The Smashing Pumpkins – Bell Center – Montreal, QC

*pictures from various users on Flickr.  I couldn’t find a great Ocenia tour shot from Montreal so I used this one instead.
Etienne and I hit the open road for Montreal late Sunday afternoon to go see the highly anticipated Pumpkins show in support of their new album Oceania.

Faithful readers know that I am a huge Pumpkins fan.  I also really love their new Oceania album.  It’s their best since Mellon Collie.  It’s amazing.  I’m really happy that this was the follow-up to Zeitgeist because it reaffirms the fact that they are still the band we know and love.

We pulled into Montreal with some time to kill so we went to this nice Irish pub around the Bell Center (which was an oven inside).  I had this weird sense of Déjà vu with Etienne while we were munching on some fish and chips.  Ever get that feeling?  It was coming in full force that night!

We managed to miss the first act, but no matter, we headed down to the main floor area and settled in around the sound booth area.  Luckily for us, the arena was in a half arena set up so the stage was at half ice.  There was an enormous orb above the stage which would be used to project 3d image mapping and was designed by the same guy who designed the Roger Waters Wall tour.  We even noticed a Dark Side of the Moon vinyl sitting in front of one of the computer stations!

8:30 and it’s go time.  I’m pumped.  I know this is going to be a great show.  This is also Etienne’s first Pumpkins show and I know it won’t disappoint.

The sound was great, the images were amazing, everything was firing on all cylinders.  They opened up with Quasar off their new album and played the entire album in one fell swoop.  It’s great to hear it in a live setting to see the different nuances they put into it.  There are a lot of highlights just from this album…I really enjoyed Violet Rays, My Love is Winter and Oceania.  Plus, it was great to see that the Chimaera kicked things off into high gear like it was 1993 all over again.  The crowd was loving it.

The rest of the night was spent living a dream of seeing the Pumpkins in full form again.  They started off with a really great cover of Space Oddity and then ripped into X.Y.U.  I never thought I would ever see this gem again in my life!  I really enjoy how the Pumpkins have been reissuing their old albums as they tend to play the hits from the old albums depending on the next one coming out.  Incidentally, Mellon Collie is the next one up so there was a ton of Mellon Collie songs being played this night…XYU, Tonight, Tonight, Bullet, Zero…good times were had by all!

The encore punch of Ava Adore, Cherub Rock and Zero blew everyone away and the crowd was clamouring for more!  The band mentioned that this was one of the best crowds they had seen…at least in Canada (must have been a snide remark at Toronto the week before!)

The Pumpkins are back!  2.5 hours of their Oceania tour is definitely a ‘must-see’.  I haven’t seen a better tour since the Mellon Collie tour, and that was with Kevin up in the nosebleed sections back at the Maple Leaf Gardens – September 14, 1996.

Etienne and I had a great time and we had a good laugh driving back through the sketchy area of Montreal on the way back home.  Thank you road construction!  We were back on track eventually and drove home in awe of what we just witnessed.

Setlist (from spfc.org)

Encore: