Steven Wilson
The Future Bites

A disturbing album, an aseptic nightmare, nothingness contained in an anonymous box, a monolith of egocentrism. Random words, perhaps like the latest work of Steven Wilson, an English gigartist whose eclecticism has perhaps, indeed certainly, taken pernicious paths. The pretext for The Future Bites was probably meant to be a more electronic pop approach, maybe to conquer the masses, which however has almost radically detached from the previous prog-rock works, always redundant but often very apt. Never seen before stuff? No, since Peter Gabriel already did it in his solo phase, as did David Bowie and Queen. Hanging up the guitar, or rather subordinating it to the machine, and making it all very understandable even to the simplest ears. Something, however, seems to have gone wrong, and the album is rather the bizarre and depressing result of a creative crisis that probably involves all of us. What do we really want to listen to today? What are the new frontiers? Compared to the rather easy melodies, the album is steeped in lyrics that - when they are not incomprehensible - focus on these truly uncertain times of social superpowers, pneumatic consumerism, and the necrotic exacerbation of individualism. The album is short, I mean offensively brief, in total contrast to the panzerotti with extra mozzarella of the previous ones, including the Porcupine Tree adventures. Of this brevity, he seems to be proud, perhaps also to push the myriad of bonus contents offloaded in the thousands of editions, flaunting the same killer modularity of the marketing criticized by the album. Paradoxical, perhaps genius, surely provocative.

Another non-exclusive element is represented by a certain invasiveness of female choirs, which take over the choruses on several occasions, in "Eminent Sleaze" and "Personal Shopper", the latter being an undeniable highlight of the album, an endless and claustrophobic race on digital tracks that harkens back to Kraftwerk, disco, a bit of the eighties, and Elton John, who offers a suggestive cameo appearance. The track is a denunciation of terminal consumerism, where both parties now move by pure inertia: producers have nothing left to offer but to fuel the mania of possession, while buyers are willing to pay any price for this ephemeral, sterile satisfaction. It is all very well represented by the distressing video, which serves as an effective complement for a work that looks at the social phenomenon, multimedia, the transfiguration of the individual through technology. "King Ghost" analyzes precisely this last aspect. Despite the somewhat cryptic lyrics and delicate, dreamy electronic arpeggios, it deals with burning issues - a very personal interpretation - such as the use of an avatar as sublimation/alteration of one's personality (you are lightning fast as you move through a photograph), but it's only a palliative (you can scrub away the dirt, but can't erase the blame, you'd better use your medicine), while a robotic or otherworldly voice seems to be addressing this ghost king, besides spouting a long series of curious terms like SKAOKA. "Follower" is another caustic episode, where Wilson targets influencers (follow me, I'll be the brick thrown at your window), his followers, and the haters, the apocalypse of reason (the future bites, millions of spitting, too much time boy, too much everything), "Man of the People" is a disturbing homage to Pink Floyd, where the similarities to "Welcome to the Machine" are so suffocating as to fear the arrival at any moment of the legendary minimoog solo.

The album undoubtedly closes on a high note and with greater personality with "Count of Unease," long, poignant, and very enjoyable, probably the most effective link to previous works. Here, old fans will probably feel at home and be overcome with a surge of anger for everything they've had to endure before. Personally, I'm not part of the fundamentalists of the prog soul of good Steven, I'm open to pretty much everything and coincidentally appreciated his experiments like Bass Communion. However, The Future Bites is not a completely successful record, it flows well to the end, but it also lasts terribly little and many episodes are not memorable; you listen to it, but you're not sure you'll return to it to discover new details as happened in the past. It does a lot to estrange the fanbase, and probably too little to win over new admirers; it's a work that probably suffered from the pandemic impact and hands us some of its ominous consequences. Difficult to consider it a parenthesis or a new course, perhaps better the former, necessary? Superfluous? In its ambiguity, it remains a divisive record that has a certain unhealthy charm in reflecting on important themes and the new relationships between artist and consumer. It may not be memorable, but perhaps it's something that someone sooner or later had to do, a base to reflect on to start anew.