CD Review: Billy Corgan's 'TheFutureEmbrace'

CD Review: Billy Corgan's 'TheFutureEmbrace'

Billy Corgan's 'TheFutureEmbrace': Aidin Vaziri | Apparently, things have gotten so bad for Billy Corgan he can't even afford a computer with a working space bar. His called his new album "TheFutureEmbrace," and the songs include "The CameraEye," "Pretty, pretty STAR" and "DIA," which indicate that his shift key might have gone a little sticky as well. You would think that with all that time he put in with the Smashing Pumpkins, the singer would have at least saved up enough money to buy a secondhand TRS-80 with working letters and everything. Or maybe having his heart broken by his longtime girlfriend, photographer Yelena Yemchuck, hurt so much that Corgan could no longer be bothered with something as mundane as the English language. That would certainly explain why his first formal solo outing (everyone knows the Pumpkins' albums were solo affairs in all but name) sounds even more anguished and primitive than when he stalked around like Nosferatu singing things like "The Crying Tree of Mercury." Over a dozen tracks, Corgan obsesses over the breakup, trading in his '70s-metal-guitar onslaught for something more subdued but no less forceful. The highlight is an odd, electronically bent cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody." Sorry, "ToLoveSomebody." The song has been done many times before -- by everyone from Nina Simone and Janis Joplin to Tom Jones and Michael Bolton -- but never with the Cure's morose Robert Smith singing backing vocals. That enough is reason to think Corgan just might make a grab at relevance once again.