Even as the guitars rise to a level of overwhelming tectonic force on The Smashing Pumpkins' upcoming 10th studio album, Monuments To An Elegy, Billy Corgan's aching tenor hovers angelically above the fray, seemingly indicating that the mercurial bandleader is enjoying a period of relative contentment. Throughout the nine-song disc, he sounds beatific, blissed-out even, a stark contrast to the first or even second impressions many have of the Chicago rocker as the angst-fueled Explainer In Chief for his generation.

“I’m in a better place in my life," Corgan admits with a gentle laugh. "I think a lot of people have impressions of me that aren’t real, so I feel that when I talk about being happy or more content in my life that I’m talking about a mythical opposite of that guy who supposedly exists or doesn’t exist.”

He pauses thoughtfully, then adds, "I’ve literally had people walk up to me on the street and say, ‘You’re the rat in a cage guy,' or ‘You’re the Smashing Pumpkins guy.’ It’s how they identify me, and that’s fine – it means I did one thing right. But it doesn’t define me. Like anybody’s life, there’s good times and bad times. This is a better time than others, and I think that does translate to the music.”

Monuments To An Elegy, due out December 9th, is the second full-album installment immersed in the ongoing 44-song project, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope – Corgan says that the next record, Day For Night, planned for next year, will complete the set – and it sees The Smashing Pumpkins' lineup, which for the past few years included drummer Mike Byrne and bassist Nicole Fiorentino, down to the core duo of Corgan and guitarist Jeff Schroeder. To much ballyhoo earlier this year, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee guested on the set, and the success of this gambit can be measured in how fully integrated he sounds on each track – he neither apes past styles nor imposes his own sensibilities on the music.

"Tommy completely committed to the process," Corgan enthuses. "He played differently than he would in certain circumstances, and the way he normally played in certain circumstances was perfect. It made us sound fresh again in that maybe the busier style of Pumpkins drumming does. He's really remarkable."

In the following interview with MusicRadar, Corgan opens up about the recording process for the new album, working with Tommy Lee, the evolution of the band's sound and whom he might be performing with on stage next year. (You can pre-order Monuments To An Elegy at iTunes. Information on limited-edition vinyl, along with special CP + LP versions, is available at The Smashing Pumpkins website.)

The album is nine songs – that's a nice, tight statement.

“That was the plan going in. I just feel that it’s hard to achieve a high level of quality past a certain number of tracks. Combine that with the fact that the audience doesn’t seem to be listening to complete albums the way they used to, so it made sense to go back to a smaller scale. I mean, I remember having records as a kid that were eight songs long. Boston’s first album was eight songs. So maybe it’s going back to a mentality that the album is something that isn’t going to take up too much of your time, especially if it’s a rock ‘n’ roll record and not something conceptual.”

Do you miss that, though? The whole album experience that we used to have…

“I do. It’s hard to explain without going into a lengthy diatribe, but the Pumpkins isn’t in this current guise what it was necessarily designed to do. There’s a level of disappointment to that, because it was never meant to be a pop-rock group. [Laughs] It was meant to be a rock group with populist tendencies – and ever moving forward musically. But I don’t know anybody who could have foretold the changes in both the music business and the musical culture. Nowadays you have albums coming out that literally sound like they were made 20 years ago, and the audience is totally cool with it.”

Unless I missed something, there’s no guitar solos on the record.

“Well, there’s a subtle solo at the end of the very last song [Anti-Hero]. That’s about it. We didn’t plan to have no solos; there was no edict, like, ‘Thy shall have no solos.’ It just didn’t feel like it was part of this record. The last record had lots of guitar work in that vein. We went out and played the album in full, and although it was enjoyable, it wasn’t a visceral experience for either the band or the audience. It’s not as if people are clamoring for our solos.

“There was a time in Pumpkins music where I think the solo was a part of the epic arrangement mentality, but that’s come and gone, too. I do know that we’re trying to redefine the way we play guitar, and that might in a sense mean taking a step backwards to simplicity is a way for us to take a step forward – going forward.”