Smashing Pumpkins release new single, ‘Being Beige’

Fresh off an experimental (and very expensive) limited-run noise LP, Billy Corgan is back to his day job in Smashing Pumpkins.

The long-running rock group has released the first bit of new music from its forthcoming album “Monuments to an Elegy,” out Dec. 9. The single is called “Being Beige,” and it’s one of the more tender things Corgan has done in recent years. It starts with some acoustic folk-guitar picking and a purposefully tinny drum machine, before opening up to a shoegazey guitar wash and some sweet-hearted Corgan vocals.

Listen to the track on Soundcloud.

The album’s textures might be familiar to longtime fans of the band. The producer Howard Willing, who worked on the band’s 1998 electro-goth opus “Adore,” contributed production to the album. It might be a savvy decision - “Adore” just got a massive re-issue and has a bit of critical wind at its back that suggests a re-evaluation of the Pumpkins’ most divisive prime-career album is in order.

Also appearing as a guest on the new album? Motley Crue’s drummer Tommy Lee, a move that stands to rupture the Sunset Music Festival’s space-time continuum.

The album is the latest installment in Corgan’s mega-project “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope,” which has spanned albums starting from 2010’s “Songs for a Sailor” and will continue through 2015’s finale, “Day for Night.”

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