One thing you can count on Smashing Pumpkins for is their consistent ability to drop eye-catching music videos — be it the crushingly beautiful nostalgia of "1979" or the aesthetic defining "Ava Adore." But their new video for "Solara" — the band's first new song since Corgan reunited with guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — just might be their craziest yet.
The visual starts with frontman Billy Corgan imprisoned underground, wearing a skirt and slave collar and being dragged around by three captors in bad makeup and tracksuits. They take him to a chair where he's injected with "XXX-Treme Trauma" flavored vape juice, while he sits looking bored and exhales smoke. Elsewhere in the video, James Iha and friends spit out blood into a fountain, while a musclebound butler in a Jason Voorhees hockey mask hands them towels.
The weirdness doesn't end there, throughout the video imagery ranges from the unnerving, like Jimmy Chamberlin playing a same color game Connect Four against an opponent, a mime giving birth to a fake baby, and the aboveground hellscape where people are either ripped apart or in corpse paint. Maybe there's a message embedded in all the strange imagery through the video, or maybe it's nihilistic commentary where nothing matters. That's for you to decide.
Check out the video above, and catch Smashing Pumpkins' reformed lineup on tour this summer.
