TheFutureEmbrace

The unthinkable has been achieved: a Billy Corgan album for anyone who always hated Billy Corgan.

There's a moment or two of alarm and urgency, but less of the rage that colored the Pumpkins' music. In its place, Corgan summons a liturgical grandeur that makes this an almost religious embrace. [19 Jun 2005]

Corgan allows a surprisingly vulnerable side to appear. [Jul 2005, p.96]

The thing that's not missing here is songs. [18 Jun 2005]

If you like Billy Corgan for his knack of writing a radio-friendly song with a heavy dose of angst, then you may not enjoy TheFutureEmbrace. Yet give the man credit for moving on and signalling a clear break with his past.

TheFutureEmbrace is a bit colder than what's expected of Corgan, especially after Zwan's celebratory Mary Star Of The Sea, and it goes without saying that he's handed in his trendsetter badge. But the fact remains that he's a pop showman, and regardless of the vehicle, he's going to continue writing transcendent sing-along rock songs from the heart.

While the lyrics are more introspective and the music more electronic than what we've come to expect from the Pumpkins or his most recent project, Zwan, thankfully Corgan's distinctive vocals and grungy guitar riffs are ubiquitous.

So, forgive Corgan his infinite lyrical badness, but know that infinity's a lot to forgive.

There's nothing as heroic as Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight Tonight, but Now (And Then) is a surprisingly successful attempt at emotion. [Jul 2005, p.113]

Corgan is slowly swamped by the style he's adopted.

Musically, it's closest to Adore, yet it's a distant cousin: if that album hinted at '80s synth rock and goth, this re-creates the spirit and sound of 1986, right down to the robotic pulse of the rhythms, the cold, slick surface of the production, and the brooding, self-absorbed atmosphere.

What The Future Embrace lacks in terms of consistency, it makes up for with the feeling that Corgan has turned a corner, that his return to musical credibility is well underway, and isn’t nearly as inconceivable as it was one year ago.

The gear is buffed to such a productional sheen that its every sound seems like a reflective surface, the compositional complexity leading to an album as confusing -- and, ultimately, distancing -- as a hall of mirrors.

Future mostly sounds like a bunch of so-so Smashing Pumpkins songs, stripped of everything except Corgan's adenoidal vocals, and then set to a chorus of synths and electronic drumbeats.

Only on the more solid "rock" tracks does he get it right. [#10, p.109]

For the most part, the vitality is gone.

Flim-flammy beats, tinny guitars, and Corgan's nasal moan predominate as he mopes like it's 1984 and his mom forgot to renew his Sisters of Mercy fanclub membership. [24 Jun 2005, p.164]

It sounds like Corgan wanted to make a classic eighties 4AD-style shoegazing record, but instead of offering us something swirling and beautiful, we end up with an experience that is simply flat and grey.

Not hopeless, but hopelessly self-indulgent. [Jul 2005, p.94]

We're left with the immutable Corgan sans ambition: his narrow whine, melodies not quite predictable but dull anyway and a misty worldview with collegiate airs. [Jul 2005, p.116]

It's not that any of the songs are horrible; it's just that they are so shamelessly middle-of-the-road that you become sickened by the ambivalence that they instill.

Corgan does his level best to make the whole affair as joyless as possible.