THE FUTURE BITES

If you have been following the progressive rock and metal scene over the past 30 years, the name Steven Wilson will be no stranger to you. After leaving his main band Porcupine Tree, in 2008 Wilson started a very successful solo career that has seen him rapidly become an icon for the contemporary progressive rock/metal community. Albums like The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) and Hand. Cannot. Erase. are rightfully considered modern prog rock masterpieces and gained Steven Wilson accolades among critics and public alike. However, Steven is not a man who rests easily on his laurels and already with 2017's To The Bone he showed his hunger for experimenting with new sounds and influences, which inevitably disappointed more than a few progressive rock aficionados. Personally, I quite liked that album and did not find it such a dramatic departure from Wilson's previous output as some believed it was. It wasn't perhaps his strongest effort and did not have the charm of concept albums like Raven and HCE, but it did contain some excellent moments.

Steven's sixth album, The Future Bites, was announced to be an even starker deviation from his prog rock roots. It undoubtedly is. It's an album born out of Steven's love for sophisticated pop and electronic music (Tears for Fears, Talk Talk, Roxy Music, XTC). The rock (let alone metal) influences are nearly completely wiped out off this album. The guitar work is sparse and limited to chords and occasional solos that are more punkish, noisy explosions than melodic constructions ("Eminent Sleaze"). Rhythmically, the music relies in equal parts on Michael Spearman's (Everything Everything) light and easy drumming and David Kosten's (aka Faultine) synthetic programmed beats. Synths, sound effects and loops dominate the musical landscape. Vocally, Steven frequently resorts to his characteristic androgynous falsetto to carry the melodies. This, and the abundant use of background female vocals give the album a strong funk/R&B flavor.

Most songs revolve around short and simplified structures, with only two songs exceeding the five minutes bar ("Personal Shopper" and "Count of Unease"). There is not much space for solo spotlights on this album, and the moments of instrumental brilliance are few and far in between. "Eminent Sleaze" surprises the listener with a string orchestra superimposed to a funky bass and guitar pattern. The vocal collage in the middle of "Personal Shopper" is another stroke of genius and one of the most exhilarating moments on the album: Elton John (!) guests by reading out a list of superfluous consumption products and a series of psychological states that they substitute for ("self-esteem", "self-love", "self-doubt"), the different words appearing faster and faster to create a vocal tourbillion that disorientates the listener. The rest of the album, however, inhabits much more average territories, coming across as pleasant and well-constructed, but never exciting or engrossing.

Despite all this, the album still sounds undeniably like Steven Wilson. In its most mellow electronic/ambient moments ("King Ghost", "Man of the People", "Count of Unease"), it reminds me of Steven's early work with Porcupine Tree on albums like Stupid Dream and his first solo release Insurgentes. "12 Things I forgot" continues Steven's tradition of pop/rock semi-acoustic ballads that one can find aplenty on Porcupine Tree's albums. Even the most electronic moments of the album, like "Personal Shopper", do not come as a total surprise given that Steven's love for electronic music has surfaced more than once in his previous work (for instance on "No Part of Me" or "Index" from his second solo album Grace for Drowning).

Therefore, my disappointment with The Future Bites does not really come from the fact that I thought Steven Wilson has "betrayed his origins" (what a silly thing to criticize an artist for, anyhow) or that he has "sold out". I feel that this album is a product of Steven's genuine artistic expression as much as anything he has written before. No, the reason why I gave a low score to The Future Bites is that this album leaves me terribly cold, unexcited and uninvolved. I suspect this is partly the effect Wilson was going for as it matches well the theme of the album ? a dry satire of the mindless consumerism and status-seeking of our times. The clean and aseptic production, the detached and processed vocals and the synthetic elements of the music all contribute to conjure up images of shopping malls infested with plasticky products, lifeless mannequins and brainwashed consumers. It's a sinister and compelling concept, that however does not work so well as a musical embodiment precisely because of the qualities that it strives to incarnate (lifelessness, sterileness, asepticism). In a nutshell: The Future Bites comes across as dull and uninteresting, with too few moments that really perk my interest and hold my attention for more than a handful of seconds.

I doubt that Steven Wilson will ever be able to write an album that is a total disaster, no matter the style he chooses to write or play. The Future Bites is no exception. It is not a bad album. There is enough variation in its songs to please everybody except perhaps the most radical progsters out there. The melodies are pleasant, some songs are even very good ("King Ghost", "Man of the People", "Personal Shopper"). However, there is too much averageness, too many moments that pass by unremarkably and are soon forgotten. I hate to say it but much of the songs on The Future Bites have a background music quality that greatly reduces my eagerness to play them over and over again while listening intently. In the end, my disappointment mostly comes down to wrong expectations: I admire and respect so much Steve Wilson's artistic genius that when I put on one of his albums I always expect to be blown away by it, no matter its style or genre. This did not happen with The Future Bites. Its songs did not impress me from a technical point of view, nor did they involve me emotionally. They did not even outrage me. I felt nothing: they just passed by, mediocrely and inconspicuously. And this is probably the worst possible thing that can happen to any piece of music.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]