December 4, 2002

With new Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins products hitting shelves this month, 2002's holiday shopping season sure smells a whole lot like alterna-teen spirit again. But who's picking up the scent? It's been a decade since grunge's heyday, and the kids who found faith in 1993's holy trinity of teenage angst – In Utero, Vs., and Siamese Dream – have grown up and out of the genre's target, adolescent demographic. Must be time, then, to package some mellon collie memories and hope there are twentysomethings in the market for some early-'90s nostalgia.

Why else would Smashing Pumpkins release a previously promo-only album of rarities and live material two years after Billy Corgan and co. called it quits – and six years after most people thought they'd split? Earphoria, the 15-song soundtrack to 1994's VHS documentary Vieuphoria, isn't the likeliest of cash cows (not as if, say, Corgan's ex-wife sold the Great Pumpkin's journals to the highest bidder), but as a reminder of that band's gloriously self-indulgent anthems and more-is-more guitar grandiosity, the comp earns its commercial release.