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Rating:
An album difficult to judge, this "The Future Now" (1978), the seventh solo LP of Peter Hammill, at the time divided between personal ambitions and yet another incarnation of Van Der Graaf (no longer Generator, due to Jackson's departure). Twelve tracks that make up a fragmented, restless running time, constantly battling between old prog reminiscences and new electronic/experimental frontiers, between notable moments and evident intermediary passages.
Can the music still be called "progressive"? The concept is still fitting, the sounds a bit less so: if "The Mouse Trap" recalls the VDDG Still Life period, many other tracks, like "Trappings" or "Energy Vampires," deeply belong to Hammill's solitary sensibility, who in the meantime is becoming increasingly interested in synthesizers, electronic and avant-garde noises. Unfortunately, this creative anxiety is not always on target, as in the hasty "A Motorbike In Africa": a jumble of synthetic percussion and industrial noises that accompany the artist's inconclusive narrative.
When the lightness of the piano takes back its role, and the modernist textures become less oppressive, Hammill hits the mark (almost) like a few years earlier: this is the case with the concluding "Palinurus (Castaway)," which, while not giving up on the synths, offers a more classical and reassuring conclusion. Splendid, on the same coordinates, is "If I Could," sung with intensity and enriched by acoustic guitar arpeggios and strings.
Despite remaining a work of fine craftsmanship, there is a sense of general decline in inspiration in both songwriting and execution (nevertheless, the almost frippertronic noises that hover in more than one composition are worth noting): however, an interesting LP, courageous and personal (framed by a poor cover).
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 The Mousetrap (Caught in) (04:05)
After all is said and done, not very much will have been either way:
I'm a chronicler of action, I'm an actor in the play.
I know the lines I have to speak,
I know that I won't ever quit, corpse, or dry,
but the performance gets so pointless
and the days just drift on by.
Every time that I go to turn the pages of the calendar
in the third act of this twenty-ninth year of the show
I'm aware of the latest leading lady and get mad at her...
it's perfunctory, but why she'll never know.
When I began I had my hopes,
believed that I could be a leading light of the stage,
but now I've stunned myself to silence,
exhausted all my inner rage,
extinguished all my joy and violence,
trapped all my feelings in a cage.
Every time that I go to turn the pages of the calendar
I can see that I'm not really going anywhere;
all these years I have skirted round experience like a scavenger.
Can I really feel? I wonder if I dare?
At the end of the run, will there be anyone who cares?
And behind the actor's pose, heaven knows
if there's anyone left in there.
07 The Future Now (04:11)
Here we are, static in the latter half
of the twentieth century
but it might as well be the Middle Ages,
there'll have to be some changes
but how they'll come about foxes me.
I want the future now,
I want to hold it in my hands;
all men equal and unbowed,
I want the promised land.
but that doesn't seem to get any closer,
and Moses has had his day...
the tablets of law are an advertising poster,
civilisation here to stay
and this is progress?
You must be joking!
Me, I'm looking for any kind of hope.
I want the future now,
I want to see it on the screen,
I want to break the bounds
that make our lives so mean.
Oh, blind, blinded, blinding hatred
of race, sex, religion, colour, country and creed,
these scream from the pages of everything I read.
You just bring me oppression and torture,
apartheid, corruption and plague;
you just bring me the rape of the planet
and joke world rights at the Hague.
Oh, someday the Millennium!
But how far is someday away?
I want the future now
I'm young, and it's my right.
I want a reason to be proud.
I want to see the light.
I want the future now,
I want to see it on the screen,
I want to break the bounds:
make life worth more than dreams.
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