Corgan's most intimate set of songs yet, the hauntingly beautiful
THE FUTURE EMBRACE brings together Corgan's astonishing past and
promising persent. The first single is "Walking Shade." [Note:
This product is an authorized CD-R and is manufactured on demand]
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Odd it may seem, Billy Corgan is wearing his heart on
his extremely long sleeve, in his first proper solo album since
dismantling the Smashing Pumpkins five years ago. Maybe it took
that long to process the enormity of that loss, since The Future
Embrace sounds like nothing so much as a break-up album. But
having said that, it's rather difficult to determine whether it's
the absence of James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlain, and D'Arcy Wretzky
or just something much more mundane than the shattering of an
affair of the heart that his sent him on this 12-song
confessional. To his extreme credit, Corgan isn't trying to
obscure his pain and uncertainty behind layers of guitar
distortion and sonic dissonance the way he did with the Pumpkins,
instead he's employed a rather restrained hand as he tries to
work his way out of this psychic maze of his own making,
cavorting with the ghosts of his past, present and future on such
kinetic panoramas as "All Things Change," "DIA," or the rather
wrenching "The Camera Eye," where the musician wrestles with his
fear of aging, his burgeoning religiosity as and the necessity of
transformation. Don't miss Robert Smith singing rather angular
back-ups on the Bee Gee's skewed ode to love, "You Don't Know
What It's Like." A tremendous and noble effort from a major
talent. --Jaan Uhelszki
