LET ME OUT!

Liner notes review: Billy Corgan's TheFutureEmbrace

Note: I wrote a review of this album for The Summer Northwestern. I traded the review copy of the album in at 2nd Hand Tunes in Evanston and got $5 for it. I win.—7/9/05

I suspected Billy Corgan was turning into some sort of pale bald raving Jesus two years ago when I saw him play with Zwan and he began chanting to the audience about "LOVE" as if just to say the word would heal everyone and make me forget I was getting very uncomfortable cramped into a gym with a lame and stiff college audience.

"DO YOU BELIEVE IN MEEEEEEEE? DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOOOOOOVE!" You know, one of those stupid things you can croon to get unconditional applause from any audience. Kinda like "HEELLOOOO CHICAAAAGO!" At least in 2003 he played and sang like a motherfucker. There's none of that on his new album, TheFutureEmbrace, aka Welcome to my Creepy Pseudoreligious Synth-Rock Phase aka Touch My Wounds and Be Ye Healed.

Oh, I tried, I really tried, for about five minutes, to like this allbum. I would never ask for more of the same, especially from someone who writes the way Corgan does. I was glad to dip my fingers into your wounds, Billy. I didn't get creeped out by the photos in the liner notes—close-ups of your mangled front-teeth, your scrawny E.T. ribcage and what appear to be (fake?) burn marks all over your arms.

I yanked back my hand when I realized the booklet was full of adolescent crap-haiku:

come what may
it's here I must wait
to keep the dogs at bay
ok? ok
sorrow
sorrow

I also did not care for this admonition:

I DEDICATE THIS ALBUM TO ALL WHO BELIEVE IN THE PATH OF LOVE. IT IS MY HUMBLE BELIEF THAT GOD HAS MANY NAMES BUT JUST ONE FACE...AND IT IS TO THAT DIVINE SPIRIT WITH A CAPITAL "S" THAT I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS MOMENT TO SING MY SONGS FOR YOU

Lawdy, Lawdy! Please! Grab me by the head and dip me in the waters of the ol' Shenandoah! I'll buy you a big bright neon crucifix and live with you and eat nothing but soggy granola and wild forest berries for the rest of my life!

Somehow I can't really hold it against him. If nothing else, he keeps moving and keeps changing. Good for him.

And now I'm going to act like a dick, sell this review copy to a used record store and drown my irritation in Siamese Dream.

Quotes

Since I got shit else to post on right now, here are some bits I liked in Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth, in which Satan comes to Earth and writes back to his fellow archangels about the work of a sadistic God.

"His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values." —Letter II

"What do you think of the human mind? I mean, in case you think there is a human mind?" —Letter VI

"It is wonderful, the thorough and comprehensive study which the Creator devoted to the great work of making man miserable." —Letter VII

Toward better monsters for England, or, "We're the hooligans...—BLAM!"

or, "No one knows what it's like to be a dustbin..."

Spring-Heeled Jack terrorizes the English with his claws, red eyes, maniacal laughter and his remarkable leaping ability. Legend doesn't confirm whether he's ever killed anyone—but he might have, once!

Does this guy do anything except pussyfoot around and not die? He was benign enough that penny dreadful authorsrewrote him as a hero and it stuck. At least for now he has Jack the Ripper to upstage him.

Bill Hicks would call this "classic England." Hicks said he was once offered a job plugging for "Orange Drink." On his Rant in E-minor album, he told a comedy-club audience:

"I'm goin', what's the name of the product?"
"'Orange Drink!'"

The plain-named, nonlethal Spring-Heeled Jack shows a similar lack of exotic flair. If I'd never seen that Wikipedia article, I would have thought the name was a generic nickname for a lively dancer, or perhaps someone who could put away fifteen pints at the pub and get up the next morning and skip about, good as new. "Good old reliable Spring-heeled jack! Always industrious and perky!" Where's the horror?

England must renew its apocryphal monsters the way it always renews its culture and economy—by importing things from Asia. The English should invade Nepal and snag them some Yetis. British explorers were the first to see Yetis, but the English public never adopted the Yeti to the extent that its novelty could wear off. First there was tea, coffee, sugar, unruly brown people. Those are old now. England's only cultural hope in terms of folk legends is a thriving breed of unspeakable flesh-eating snow-apes.