Moments like this blur the line between fan and photographer in the best way possible. You spend years hearing the songs. Then suddenly you’re standing right there, camera in hand, capturing it all. This was one of those nights. Billy Corgan and The Machines of God. A sold-out Irving Plaza in New York City on Father’s Day. Still trying to process it all, to be honest.

RETURN TO DUST
Opening the night was Return to Dust, who walked into the usual New York scenario: a sold-out room still taking its sweet time to engage. But the band held their ground. Even with their bassist confined to a chair, playing through a broken foot, they delivered. Their music leans into that ’90s alt-grunge scene with just the right amount of weight. Full of running guitars, sharp vocals, this band brings the vibe of legends Soundgarden and Alice in Chains without ever feeling like copycat nostalgia. You could feel them pull the crowd closer with each song. By the end of their set, it was clear why they were chosen to open for Corgan. The crowd, largely longtime The Smashing Pumpkins fans, felt the connection — a sound that honored the past without being trapped by it.

BILLY CORGAN AND THE MACHINES OF GOD
When Billy Corgan hit the stage with his newly formed solo band, the crowd erupted. There’s a presence that only decades of music can carry. This wasn’t a The Smashing Pumpkins arena show. This was Irving Plaza—small enough to feel the music in your chest and close enough to lock eyes with the band. This was for the ones who lived inside Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, who dissected Machina/The Machines of God, or who even know what Aghori Mhori Mei is.

The “Return to Zero” tour isn’t about just playing the hits; it’s about dusting off the strange, the layered, the often overlooked songs. He gave the crowd “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” but he also ran through songs like “Glass and the Ghost Children,” “Sighommi,” and “Real Love.”

Corgan moved through SP’s eras like someone flipping through old notebooks, each song part memory, part manifesto. At one point, Corgan simply admitted to the crowd: “It blows my mind people still want to listen to our songs.” Throughout the evening, the audience shouted out Father’s Day wishes to Corgan.

The timing and the sentiment of it all just fit. During “1979,” Corgan brought two of his kids out on stage. Standing next to him as the crowd sang every word — a song that was originally written about his own teenage years — the full circle of it all hit like a gut punch. For all of the fathers in the crowd (including myself), it resonated so deeply.

Toward the end of the set, Corgan stripped things back for an acoustic version of “Tonight, Tonight.” A song that once soared with full orchestration suddenly felt personal. I was 14 again, back in my bedroom, fumbling through the chords on a beat-up guitar. Isn’t that how we all learned the lyrics back then?

At this point in his career, Corgan doesn’t have anything left to prove. But in a sold-out Irving Plaza, he still delivered a reminder of how strange, ambitious, and unexpectedly timeless his catalog really is. Some nights are about the spectacle. This one was about the music. And it’s the kind of show you feel lucky to have stood in the room for.

This show lived in that rare middle space — between past and present, between who we were when these songs found us and who we are now.

Goosebumps.

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FULL SETLIST

• Glass’ Theme
• Heavy Metal Machine
• Where Boys Fear to Tread
• Pentagrams
• The Crying Tree of Mercury
• Real Love
• Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
• Sighommi
• Glass and the Ghost Children (Corgan on bass)
• You Only Live Twice (Nancy Sinatra cover)
• 999
• Bullet With Butterfly Wings
• Muzzle
• 1979 (Corgan brings kids on stage)
• Here’s to the Atom Bomb
• Edin
• White Spyder
• Tonight, Tonight (acoustic solo)
• If There Is a God
• Bodies
• The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)
• The Everlasting Gaze (encore)