Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

Gish is the sound of a band arriving fully formed. Released in 1991 on Caroline Records and produced by Butch Vig alongside frontman Billy Corgan, the Smashing Pumpkins' debut fuses heavy, layered guitars with psychedelic sweep and Corgan's searching, spiritually-minded songwriting, laying groundwork for the alt-rock explosion that would follow within a year or two. Recorded at Vig's Smart Studios in Madison on a modest budget, the album's big, bold production belied its scrappy origins, with Corgan pushing for a sound far more ambitious than most first records from an unproven band.

Tracks like "Rhinoceros," "Siva," and "Bury Me" still hit with the same swirling intensity more than three decades later, moving between pummeling hard rock, gentler interludes, and full psychedelic crescendos in ways that set the band apart from the grunge scene forming around them at the same moment. Commercially, Gish barely registered on the Billboard 200 at first, but it caught fire on college radio, climbing to number one on the CMJ chart and slowly building the audience that would carry the band into the mainstream. It's since gone platinum and stands as one of the essential debut albums of the era, the first real signal of what Corgan and company were capable of.

This 35th anniversary RSD Essential pressing lands on striking gray vinyl with pink and purple splatter, a colorful new home for a genuinely important early-90s rock record.