Smashing Pumpkins review, Glasgow - 'Frontman Corgan looked like he had stepped off the set of Dune'

The nerdy college guys and the brooding goths sounds like the cast of a US high school drama but the tribes came together for this celebration of Nineties alternative rock from two bands who remain contemporaries, if not exactly bedfellows.

The vast Hydro is not Weezer’s natural environment but they made it so with their headliner-length garage power pop set, proving they were not so far from the Pumpkins with the turbo-charged angst of Say It Ain't So and a cover of Hole’s Celebrity Skin, co-written by Billy Corgan.

Chugging juggernaut Hash Pipe filled the space easily and there was mass elation in the hall for outsider anthem Buddy Holly. Frontman Rivers Cuomo was jubilant, lifting his mike stand over the crowd to amplify the cheers.

Smashing Pumpkins do things on a different scale, from sprawling concept albums to a pomp intro which happily strayed into the realm of prog rock, from the four guitar frontline to Jimmy Chamberlin’s indulgently large drumkit, which came in particularly handy on a powerful cover of U2’s Zoo Station. Frontman Corgan looked like he had stepped off the set of Dune, and performed the track as a ridiculous but entertaining hybrid of Bond villain and dad dancer. Later, his kids joined him onstage to jump around to The Beguiled.

So there was softness and humour there – the Siamese Dream album was described as “an album for sad f***s around the world”. Corgan may well be losing his intense edge in his middle age, but that was no bad thing when the music was still delivered with such focus, whether the streamlined metal of The Everlasting Gaze, exultant gallop of Tonight, Tonight, punk rage of Bullet With Butterfly Wings, piledriving Empires with scorching solo by new touring guitarist Kiki Wong or epic guitar wrangling from Corgan before the band bowed out with Cherub Rock and Zero.