Firstly let me moan about the venue. Being a public transport aficionado in a country built around cars can be challenging and getting to the arena was no exception. After taking a bus and the L almost to the airport I then still had to wait for one of only four shuttle buses. However, I can see why they only run four since there were a total of six people on the bus. As an aside none of them were wearing Smashing Pumpkins t-shirts which worried me for a second but it turned out to be the correct bus! The Allstate Arena itself is not brilliant in terms of acoustics even after they basically divided it in half - it would have made so much more sense to use a smaller more intimate venue downtown.
Anyway, now the good stuff... The support were Anberlin who had a lot of energy and are well worth checking out; it was a shame that the venue was only half full at this point. The Smashing Pumpkins were of course excellent. The new line-up seems to be working out and Jeff Schroeder has some mad guitar skills. What amazed me was how many songs they got through, the entirety of Oceania made up the first half of the gig and then they went on to play a good selection of classics: XYU, Disarm, Tonight Tonight, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Zero, Cherub Rock... The encore was particularly awesome with their rockier version of Ave Adore and Mayonaise to close.
Also they had a massive sphere above the stage with some sort of crazy projector on the inside - it was good.
