Smashing Pumpkins Announce Free 44-Track Album!

Billy Corgan / Photo by Andra Veraart

Smashing Pumpkins fans still peeved about the "reunited" alt-rock band's lackluster 20th anniversary tour, well, this might ease your pain: Billy Corgan has just announced the release of Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, a new 44-track (!) album, which will be rolled out in a series of EPs over the coming months. The best part: It's free! The worst part: It's still titled Teargarden by Kaleidyscope.

The album is the band's first release since their reunion effort, 2007's Zeitgeist, and is Corgan's first with the group's newest addition, 19-year-old drummer Mike Byrne. Corgan -- who has been jamming in California with his new side-project Spirits in the Sky recently -- announced the new album and its back story, spiritual significance (!), and many, many other details via a lengthy blog post on the band's website:

Here's the important details:

• "The album will feature 44 songs, 4 of which are now being recorded. My desire is to release a song at a time beginning around Halloween of this year, with each new release coming shortly after until all 44 are out. Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached."

• "We will however sell highly limited edition EPs (of 4 songs each times 11), and details of how those EPs will be made available are still being worked out. Because the songs themselves will be free, the EPs will be more like collectors items for the discerning fan who will want the art itself, along with the highest possible audio quality available."

• "When the entire album is finished, it will be compiled into a deluxe box set which will also be made available for sale."

• "The story of the album is based on The Fool's Journey, as signified in the progress of the Tarot. It is my intention to approach this by breaking down the journey of our life here into four phases as made by these different characters; the Child, the Fool, the Skeptic, and the Mystic."

• "The music of Teargarden by Kaleidyscope harkens back to the original psychedelic roots of the Smashing Pumpkins: atmospheric, melodic, heavy, and pretty."

Exciting? Yes. A little kooky and spiritually-minded? Definitely. Which may explain Corgan's interesting new website, everythingfromheretothere.com