Third time's a charm. Hopefully that will be the case for the revived Smashing Pumpkins.

In July 2007, Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins made their not-so-exciting comeback with the release of Zeitgeist, a bland list of yawn-inducing hard rock numbers that tried too hard to sound dark and scary in fear of being labeled irrelevant.

On American Gothic, Corgan ditches the dark hard rock riffs for acoustic strum sessions with organ flavoring and a pinch of whimpering electric guitars. Cooking analogies aside, the EP is 17 minutes of the the softer side of the Smashing Pumpkin's successful formula once responsible for their biggest hits, like "1979."

The record starts out with "The Rose Parade," which features a quiet acoustic guitar riff that sets the tone for the album. Corgan's vocal ability is on mark, but the static instrumentation is the record's downfall. None of these songs are bad in any sense; what they lack is variety. If Zeitgeist was too gruff and unimaginative, then consider American Gothic to lack balls and be too self-indulgent.

Instead of combining the dark and light of the Pumpkins' sound, Corgan bathes in the light before wrapping it up in a nice iTunes-only exclusive package -- which speaks volumes about the band's maturing process, by the way. For example, the addition of an electric guitar would turn "Pox" into a rocking Smashing Pumpkins song, instead of a weak Stone Temple Pilots audition.

As a separate four-track release, this hardly surpasses a generic threshold. Logic might tell Smashing Pumpkins fans that if Zeitgeist is too hard and American Gothic is too soft, then maybe the third time will, in fact, be a charm. The Pumpkins are long overdue for one of those.

Grade: C