His avowed influences here include Joy Division, Gary Numan and
Low-era David Bowie, but
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. It's not all bad: In a shimmering, gothed-out cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody," which features the Cure's Robert Smith on understated backing vocals, Corgan gives the song an urgent sense of longing that even the original didn't have. The mechanical austerity of songs such as "Mina Loy (M.O.H.)" and "A100" ought to appeal to fans of the Pumpkins'
Adore and
Machina/The Machines of God. And the gorgeously minimal album closer, "Strayz," further hints at how the rest of the record would have benefited from a bit more restraint.
The main problem is that Corgan struggles with how to match his most distinctive asset -- that keening jolie laide voice of his -- with the sounds his new electronic toys make. On "TheCameraEye" and "Walking Shade," he never quite finds the right lyrical cadence or vocal melody to match the inflexible computer beats. His vocals are often too close to the front of the mix, too clean, too much like a rat in a cage, too downright Corgan-y, to sound anything but awkward when placed in such an unfamiliar context. It could just be that Corgan doesn't care if you like the new him. "Whoever I was wanting to be," he sings on "I'm Ready," "I already am.
Corgan casts himself as a modern David Bowie, nailing an array of styles and taking on a sort of futuristic artist persona. There's a lot here for Pumpkins fans -- his talent for lost-love songs is very much intact -- but it's the combination of trip-hop, indie rock and even karaoke music that will appeal to newcomers.
