Vinyl Reports

Smashing Pumpkins’ full-length debut album on Caroline, May 1991’s Gish, was regarded as one of the most successful independent releases back in the day, and it is arguably one of the defining moments for when indie rock started to find its footing in the mainstream. In celebration of its 35th anniversary, Gish was just reissued as a 180g LP on May 29, 2026, via Martha’s Music/Virgin/Capitol/UMe, and it’s a clean, well-made, and affordably priced release.

As a result, I have been listening to Gish quite a lot lately, and it has gone a long way to win me over as a relatively new fan of the early incarnation of this now-iconic band. In fact, I like it so much that I wish I’d been listening to Gish early on — just as AP editor Mike Mettler had! — as I might have climbed aboard the Pumpkins’ fan bus a little earlier. (More on that later.)

First, the basic stats. The new Gish 180g LP has an SRP of $29.99, and you can buy it from Music Direct here, and/or via the MD graphic ahead of the tracklisting section. If you’re an SP completist and want to get the $32.99 pink-and-purple splatter color variant (shown below), it’s currently sold out at SP’s own Madame Zuzu’s specialty site shop, but you can go to RSD’s official indie shop listing here to see if there’s one available for pickup or direct order.

Chicago’s Smashing Pumpkins were in many ways crushed between Nirvana’s September 1991 DGC breakout LP Nevermind and the rest of the adjacent Seattle music explosion. I now realize this was unfortunate for the Pumpkins to be lumped in with the grunge PR blitz of the times, because they have quite a different aesthetic going. I do remember a friend or two mentioning them positively back in the day (note how I cleverly avoided a bad pun like “gushing about Gish” here), but I didn’t start paying closer attention until a few years later, when October 1995’s monster hit double-album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness hit the bigtime. My bad.

Looking at Smashing Pumpkins with 20/20 hindsight, it makes sense in some ways that they would be grouped in with the grunge bands even though they were not from Seattle, and some of it may stem from sharing the same producer who was behind the boards for Nevermind — Butch Vig. (Footnote 1)

Just how big were The Smashing Pumpkins in their heyday? Well, from the official press materials for this new edition of Gish, we learn: “Since forming in Chicago in 1988, the group has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and garnered two Grammy Awards, seven MTV VMAs, and an American Music Award. Their catalog includes seminal offerings such as the platinum Gish [1991], the quadruple-platinum Siamese Dream [1993], the diamond-certified Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [1995], the platinum Adore [1998], and the gold Machina / The Machines of God [2000].”

These days, the Pumpkins continue to release acclaimed studio and live material mainly due to the direction of founder/bandleader Billy Corgan, and they are quite a successful international touring act as well. (Upcoming SP tour dates are here, if you want to go see them.)

Breaking down the DNA of this tasty and great pumpkin of a record reissue, one factoid jumped out at me immediately from the credits: “reissue audio mastered by Bob Ludwig.”

Hard stop. This is a big deal, especially for a record that effectively aimed to balance the trippy energy of ’60’s psychedelia, early ’70s hard-rocking proto-metal like Led Zeppelin, and the more ethereal vibe of ’80s alternative bands like The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, and Siouxie and The Banshees — hence, I think Bob Ludwig is perhaps the perfect choice for that task (and yes, I see and appreciate those of you in the front rows nodding your heads in agreement).

For those not yet connecting these dots, Ludwig is the man responsible for cutting the infamous yet ultimately inimitable classic first Atlantic pressing of October 1969’s Led Zeppelin II. That was a vinyl cut which caused the record label to go into near meltdown, recalling and repressing the album for fear that such a super-dynamic range, hard-rocking record would send teenagers’ turntables into frenzied skipping (and thus prompting returns). Anyone who owns or has heard the so-called “RL” cut of Zep II knows Ludwig understood early on how to achieve that delicate balance of heavy and light sounds.

After conferring with AP editor Mettler, who noted that Ludwig’s remaster was initially done for the 2011 CD/DVD reissue of Gish but not, apparently, for the equivalent 2011 LP (which is instead credited to Stan Getz), it is a safe bet to assume that it was probably crafted in the digital domain. And I’m okay with that, because at the end of the day, what really matters is how the album sounds when you actually drop the needle on it — and the fact that I can turn up Gish real loudly and hear none of the telltale signs of a poor digital master makes me feel that someone in the mastering chain paid attention to little details that make a difference for vinyl playback.

While the aforementioned Getz is also listed in the 2026 credits along with Ludwig, we don’t yet have confirmation that he handled the new lacquers. (If we get any updates about that, we will add them in here.)

Either way, I will say this: Gish rocks. And the combination of producer/engineer Vig’s stellar original recording and production, coupled with Ludwig’s attention, feels like a winning combination for this reissue LP. On the downside, my copy of the Gish LP had some dust and paper particles on it when I first took it out of the way-too-tight inner sleeve (as seen above). Fortunately, there were no resultant scratches on the disc and everything dusted off easily, and the LP was quite and well-centered during playback. (Footnote 2)

I do wish the powers that be had included a good, plastic-lined, audiophile-quality inner sleeve, though I do appreciate that this reissue recreates the original sleeve design, albeit with minor modifications related to the revised credits. Tracking the serial numbers from the runout groove led me to match up some details indicating that the LP looks to have been pressed by GZ’s Memphis Record Pressing plant.

Now, let’s address the 1,000lb gorilla in the room relative toward appreciating the newfound ability to obtain a respectable recreation of the first edition of Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish. As of this posting, an original vinyl pressing from 1991 with that original cover design would likely cost you at minimum $100 and up to $400 on Discogs. Add to that the hassle of having to import it from Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, or Spain where those rare copies seem to reside, and the new reissue seems to be a total bargain. So, today, being able to obtain a brand-new, 180g copy of Gish for $30 has a great deal of appeal. (The alternate, glossy-closeup cover image on the 2011 LP was not the favorite of many fans, so the less said about that one the better.)

And now, to the music! I am happy to report that the 35th anniversary 180g Gish LP sounds really great when played super loudly, something I did several times during the day while writing this review! Yet the music can also can still rock quite madly when played quietly late at night as well, without waking up the neighbors. (I also know that from additional firsthand experience, folks!) This is not an easy trick to pull off for many albums, and is again a testament to the great production and mastering that went into its making.

While I like Side One just fine, for some reason, I actually connected with Side Two of Gish first, and how the music builds there. For example, I love the mantra-like, droning psychedelic folk flavors on tunes like “Suffer” (Side Two, Track 1). Those beautiful open drum sounds — Jimmy Chamberlain’s big tom-tom hits and airy ride cymbals — in many ways go against the notion of what a typical sludgy hard-rock album often sounded like. The attention to detailing on Billy Corgan and James Iha’s guitars throughout as well are really compelling. In some ways, the Gish production aesthetic very much pre-echoes one of my all-time favorite records of the 1990s — Jeff Buckley’s August 1994 lone studio effort, Grace (which itself has seen a great vinyl reissue in recent years).

“Snail” (Side Two, Track 2) was another standout for me, a tune that has some of that telltale ’70s vibe, yet without the “thuddiness” that could have weighed the tune down. Vig’s production style is super-sensitive to dynamics — going light when it needs to be sunshine bright, and heavy as heavy can be when the music needs to pull you into the heart of the storm.

Flipping back to the first side, you know from the opening drum and bass intro to “I Am One” (Side One, Track 1) that you are in for a crisp, yet in-your-face listening experience. From everything I’ve read and watched online, this is one of the trademarks of Vig’s production not only for Smashing Pumpkins but for many others including Killdozer, Tad, Garbage, and, of course Nevermind.

Part of what makes Gish such an interesting listen is its willingness to mix the acoustic-oriented tracks with metal-leaning tracks such as “Rhinoceros” (Side One, Track 3), which starts quiet and builds up to a dense wall of sound. The spacy lead electric guitar lines on “Crush” (Side One, Track 5) that float almost ambiently in the background strike a terrific balance for what is mostly an almost-unplugged type of tune.

One of my favorite moments on the entire album is at the very end — the haunting “Daydream” (Side Two, Track 5), with its orchestral strings and lead vocal by bassist D’Arcy, which is just perfect.

I think you get the idea that I like Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish a whole bunch. What a joy to discover this other side to a band I missed the first time around. Well, better late to the party than never! Now I want to get Siamese Dream, which a good friend tells me continues to expand on this vibe. (Mettler tells me he concurs with that comment.)

As to the Ratings, I’m happy to give the new Gish a solid 9 for Music, and a 9 for Sound. I can only imagine how its music might sound with a full audiophile-grade, 45rpm 2LP treatment, so I’m leaving some room there for a hopeful future step-up sound rating if that ever comes to pass.

But for now, I’m diggin’ Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish just fine as it stands on this 180g single-LP 35th anniversary reissue. Go out and get your own copy of it today.

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Author bio: Mark Smotroff is an avid vinyl collector who has also worked in marketing communications for decades. He has reviewed music for eCoustics, among others, and you can see more of his impressive C.V. at LinkedIn.

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AP editor Mike Mettler adds: For my preview of the Gish 35 LP reissue, go here, wherein I also discuss the merits of the album’s previous vinyl releases. (That preview posted February 18, 2026.) As for the here and now, my Gish 35 LP ratings are a 10.5 for the Music (i.e., some tracks go up to 11, and a few hit 10), while I’ll give the Sound a 9.5, as it is indeed a decent tick better than the 2011 release.

Footnote 1: Mettler again. For more about and insight from Butch Vig, go here for an interview he and conducted together over on our sister site Sound & Vision back on September 3, 2014. There, we talk about his quite intriguing Emperors of Wyoming side project, in addition to his production work with Garbage, Nirvana, and the Pumpkins.

Footnote 2: My copy of the new Gish LP also had some dust particles upon it when I removed it from its inner sleeve (which wasn’t quite as snug as Mark’s was), but once the LP went through a thorough cleaning, I experienced no playback issues whatsoever. Remember: Always clean ’em before you play ’em!

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SMASHING PUMPKINS
GISH
180g 1LP (Martha’s Music/Capitol/Virgin/UMe)
MUSIC: 9
SOUND: 9

Original album produced by Butch Vig and Billy Corgan
Original album recorded at Smart Studios, Madison, Wisconsin
Reissue audio mastered by Bob Ludwig (in 2011)
Reissue vinyl mastered by Stan Getz at A&R Records (2011)
Reissue vinyl (likely) pressed at GZ’s Memphis Record Pressing in Memphis, Tennessee

Side One
1. I Am One
2. Siva
3. Rhinoceros
4. Bury Me
5. Crush

Side Two
1. Suffer
2. Snail
3. Tristessa
4. Window Paine
5. Daydream