Live / Smashing Pumpkins Brixton Academy, London

Most people who despise the Smashing Pumpkins would invariably lay themselves down for sacrifice at the feet of the Manic Street Preachers. For those people, the latter represent integrity, perseverance, commitment. The Pumpkins, meanwhile, are nothing but snivelling, self-pitying rich kids (and the only band capable of writing worse lyrics than the Manics). Both bands represent nothing more than feel-bad rock'n'roll. The difference is that the Pumpkins are indebted to Kiss instead of Then Jericho.

Like everything they do, their show outstayed its welcome. The same criticism was levelled at their last (double) album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a work of garish excess from the title up. Its mood of foolhardy ambitiousness was replicated at the gig, which comprised two sets, three hours and four encores. In the first set, Billy Corgan wore a sensible sweater and a woolly hat, and the band ambled through acoustic versions of songs such as the lush new single "Tonight, Tonight". It went on and on, but at least you knew it had to end: the band had a second set scheduled.

For this one, Corgan appeared in snazzy silver trousers. Even without the guitars that sounded like chainsaws, this change of apparel, alongside the fact that Corgan was now proudly bearing his bullet-shaped Uncle Fester head, told you it was time to rock. But the songs were most affecting when played with subtlety, not savagery. Such was the case on "Disarm", which features the line "The killer in me is the killer in you", and the lilting "To Forgive", with its sighing refrain: "Nothing is important".

You were grateful for these moments. And you would have been grateful for some more of them. It wasn't the volume that irked; the scream that Corgan surrenders on "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", where it sounds like someone's pouring kerosene down his throat, is one of the most disconcerting sounds in snivelling, self-pitying rock. The show had imagination - the pounding version of The Prodigy's "Firestarter" deserves to be their next single. If they could play a 50-minute set and then scarper, they could change your life. But it was simply too much of quite a good thing.

RYAN GILBEY