Billy Corgan says TheFutureEmbrace marks a new beginning, not an end. After breaking up the Smashing Pumpkins in 2000, and disbanding Zwan not long after, then saying he wants to reunite the Pumpkins, you can never be too sure. The statement about reuniting the Pumpkins was released in the Chicago Tribune, around a month before his solo debut's release. It could be seen as a publicity stunt, or maybe Billy is just crazy and says things like that for no reason. But it also makes you wonder how much effort Corgan put into TheFutureEmbrace.
Billy Corgan bids farewell to his guitars, thick distortion and pounding lively drums, and creates a new sound for himself. On the Smashing Pumpkins' 1998 album
Adore, he experimented with electronica, but a lot of the album was piano and acoustic guitar driven. Here he goes all out, there's barely any guitar, and the all the songs' atmosphere is dipped in new-wave synths. But unlike Adore, the songs don't sound as ambient or dark, the tremendous amount of synthesizers make a lot of the songs sound a bit stale. The opening track All Things Changes starts off with a really cheesy sounding symphonic synthesizers. But near the end, the synths die down to a more ambient
Kid A type sound, which suits the feel of the song much more (but without making it sound like a Kid A rip-off). The Bee Gees cover (that's right, you heard me) To Love Somebody is another example of a song with a grand sound of Billy tinkering with his digital instruments. Robert Smith lends backing vocals on To Love Somebody, making an awkward mix of Billy's whiny pinched vocals and Robert's aged New Wave voice. It ends with a Cure-like outro, not surprisingly. Fortunately Billy tones down the synth heard so overblown on All Things Changes and To Love Somebody on the rest of the album.
A100 is as Billy says "a typical disco song", and is indeed a dance song. Driven by a synthesized bass line, the start of the song hints at a lame techno hit. But, in true Pumpkin fashion, the song gradually builds up musically. Mina Loy (M.O.H.) uses a similar sounding bass line, and is probably the best song on TheFutureEmbrace. It's the liveliest song, and actually features guitar. It sounds a bit like something off
Machina: The Machines of God. Perhaps the closest thing to a 'rock' song on TFE, but still fits in with the mood of the album. TheFutureEmbrace is roughly divided in half with distorted upbeat songs like DIA (which features ex-Zwan and Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain), Mina Loy and Walking Shade, and orchestral lullabies like All Things Change, Now (And Then), and the pointless and boring I'm Ready. The former are arguably better, but all are drenched in an ongoing theme of Mellon Collie (I mean er melancholy). Corgan's David Bowie
Low influence comes out most noticeably (besides the ugly album cover) in the very catchy, flangy, Pretty Pretty STAR, and seems to have the only guitar (if it is a guitar) solo on the whole album. But the biggest influence on TheFutureEmbrace is probably New Wave, from the overdose of keyboards and synths to the Curesque ambience. Billy once again has taken an old sound and reinvented it.
Billy Corgan, even by making a new sound, fails to fully capture my attention. The first time I listened to TheFutureEmbrace it bored me to tears, especially by choosing All Things Change, a bloated ho-hum tune, as the opener. He scores some points by making a fair bit of variety in the sound of album, if not in most of the songs. Not that I don't like electronic music, which is not the case at all, or that I'm a total Smashing Pumpkins fanboy. TheFutureEmbrace goes drastically between good songs, ok songs, and just plain bad/boring songs.
Recommended Songs:
Mina Loy (M.O.H.)
Walking Shade
Now (And Then)
TheFutureEmbrace ---------> 2 stars
