September-October 2014 – Pumpkinland II

The September-October 2014 Pumpkinland II sessions were for the eventually-abandoned Day For Night album. Meant as the dark and proggy sister to the light and poppy Monuments to an Elegy, Billy Corgan and Jeff Schroeder began the sessions by recording tentative B-sides for the Monuments singles (such as "Queen of the Meadow" and "Roustabout"). Using this as a warm up, the band moved on to the eight songs from the Monuments B-list as the core to Day For Night, then focusing on additional songs. After nearly three months of work, Corgan scrapped Day For Night entirely, deeming the material not up to standard, save a few songs. While "Burnt Orange Black" and "Cardinal Rule" were both performed live in 2015 and 2016 respectively, "The Spaniards" was re-recorded for Ogilala in 2016, "Solara" was re-recorded for Shiny and Oh So Bright in 2018, and "Ramona" and "Starrcraft" were re-recorded for 2020's CYR.

Tracks recorded
All recordings are unreleased.



Background
Throughout the sessions, Corgan had reported several tentative tracklists for Day For Night. In September, the A-list songs were simply most of the B-list roll-overs from Monuments: "Burnt Orange Black", "Cardinal Rule", "Full Sail", "Overjoyed", "Solara" and "Toodle-Loo". In October, the list was refined as being: "Burnt Orange Black", "Cardinal Rule", "Full Sail", "Roustabout", "The Spaniards", "Calx", "Erstwhile", "Sword From The Stone" and "Theme For 9 Planets". By November, the A-list tracks had shifted again to: "Burnt Orange Black", "Cardinal Rule", "Full Sail", "Roustabout", "Calx", "Solara", "Magik, Magik (Everywhere)", "The Song That Shall Not Be Named" and "The Dauphine". Before ‘Monuments To An Elegy’ was released, the plan was to take ‘Day For Night’ in an experimental direction. I was thinking ‘I’ll make a pop record, then I’ll make a weird, arty record. But, seeing ‘Monuments…’ come out and going to back the ‘Day For Night’ demos, I feel that The Smashing Pumpkins shouldn’t be an arty band anymore.

I think the 14-year-old me would say that ‘Monuments…’ is a little bit too comfortable. ‘Day For Night’ is going back to something that would appeal to my teenage self. ‘Monuments…’ is really cool and I love having re-embraced my pop leanings. But is that why I really started the band? Is it what drove me forward? Not at all. ‘Monuments…’ is me solving a problem of how to get The Smashing Pumpkins back into the mainstream. I had to solve that problem before I can solve problem two, which is where ‘Day For Night’ comes in. That’s why I’d thought ‘I’ll do the thing I should do, then I’ll do the thing I want to do.’ But now what I want to do is kick people out of the way.