Billy Corgan's musical yoof

If you're like me and you really can't stomach The Smashing Pumpkins (and let's be honest here, colloquial evidence would have it that there's a lot of us about) and you paid no attention whatever to his post-Pumpkins project Zwan (despite the presence of Slint/Tortoise/The For Carnation/Papa M-guy Dave Pajo, and recent Will Oldham collaborator and touring guitarist Matt Sweeney) (and continuing to be honest, any evidence that you'd like to inspect would have it that again, there's a lot of us about) (...); if you're like me you're going to be surprised at how good his new new-wave-esque solo album TheFutureEmbrace is.

Ok. The downside is that it's still Billy Corgan singing, and the songs still sound like Pumpkins songs. The difference here is the production - it's all beautiful synth washes and arpeggios and basslines and ethereal guitars and vocal effects and so on and so on and it's all like it's 1985 again and I really was quite skeptical, believing as I do that nostalgia for it's own sake is no good and a no-good sole reason for liking something - but this effort transcends any of those concerns. It's all quite gorgeous and the thing is that instead of coming across all wry and flippant and apathetic modern yoof and so on (standard stoopid Corgan), the fragility of the words and the sounds somehow offer you up a charmingly-real personal angle by which you can quite easily find yourself being seduced. Dave Simpson in a review in the Guardian Unlimited points to Bowie's Berlin work (Low, Heroes, Lodger) and for my money he's spot on - which really means that's it's actually all like it's 1977 not '85 but that's getting pedantic.

I only have room for one track, so here's track #2, Mina Loy (M.O.H.), but there's any number of superb tracks on the album - not least the collaboration with The Cure's Robert Smith on an astonishing cover of the BeeGees To Love Somebody.

Billy Corgan - Mina Loy (M.O.H.) (right-click and Save As to download)