Mary Star of the Sea

Zwan

Reprise (Warner)

Rating: ***

The rock industry is so full of geezers living from the avails of their youth that any millionaire veteran who chooses to do otherwise is deemed crazy or brave or both. Crafty might be a better term for Billy Corgan, whose new band Zwan may be almost as well-positioned for success in the zero years as the Smashing Pumpkins was in the nineties.

It would have been easy for this prolific writer, singer and guitarist to invite some friends into a studio, throw a dozen new songs at them, and call it a band. Instead, Corgan and four partners (guitarists Matt Sweeney and David Pajo, bassist Paz Lenchantin, and Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin) holed up in a small Chicago club and spent months working out a new sound, the way people do with their very first groups.

These labours, guided by some careful strategic thinking, have produced a debut album (out next Tuesday) whose sunny pop outlook couldn't be more unlike the Pumpkins' melodramatic gloom. If the world was a vampire for Corgan in his first incarnation, it's more like a teddy bear now.

Of course, nobody in his 30s can bring his old teddy down from the attic without some bittersweet feeling. These songs bear the stains of experience, though in each case, light prevails over darkness. Settle Down kisses off the emotional homelessness of adolescence with a promise to "never lose that feeling," while basking in a blissful tangle of polyphonic guitars. The single Honestly throws aside relational game-playing for a big pop affirmation that suggests Corgan paid close attention to U2's monstrously successful Beautiful Day,and to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' recent discovery of sincerity.

El Sol and Endless Summer are luminous evocations of the season of no worries, though the past tense separates El Sol from the perpetual present of true summer pop. Baby Let's Rock launches a well-tooled party tune from a hornet-buzz instrumental introduction, though even here there's room for mature second thought. "Baby, I'm the greatest thing you've got," Corgan sings in his odd Jaggerish yowl, "in a good way, I hope."

This is a tight, intricately layered album, with few of the fat solo breaks or epic song forms characteristic of the Pumpkins. The exception is Jesus, I/Mary Star of the Sea, a 14-minute ramble that feels like an almost unwilled breakout from the pressurized order of everything else. It can also be read as a straight profession of Christian faith, which may cast light on Corgan's album alias, "Billy Burke," which is also the name of a prominent Florida evangelist.

The DVD portion of this double-disc set offers a desultory program of video footage and live-performance clips, with one-minute responses from each band member to the question, "What is Zwan?" "Music being our King," answers Corgan in his best hungry-pilgrim manner, "we're just serfs, looking for a wave we can ride for a while." Who but a rock star could get from Calvary to Malibu in one sentence?