So, Billy, we have to ask, where's the light? This is tunelessness in the name of breaking new ground. This is hazy, meandering murk. "Walking Shade," the first single, plays like a Depeche Mode tape warped from age, with Corgan's bittersweet twitter checking in over a bad phone line. Over and over, formless guitar wash and stilted rhythm almost coalesce into what lay people call a "song" -- but is merely the ebb of a tide. Corgan's bleak, sterile cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" supposedly features the Cure's Robert Smith swimming up somewhere in the fizz, but it's merely another over-overdubbed, aimless exercise. Album opener "All Things Change" and "Dia" -- which feature former Pumpkin smasher Jimmy Chamberlin on real drums -- glimmer with the melodic wist that made Corgan's earlier work so achingly beautiful. But all drone and no play means there isn't much to hang onto here. Corgan needs a band to harangue, personalities to domineer. No conflict means no resolution, and that's exactly the problem here.