“Buy for comfort, buy for kicks/Buy and buy until it makes you sick,” Steven Wilson sings on “Personal Shopper,” the lead single from The Future Bites. The former Porcupine Tree frontman is well aware of the hypocrisy in decrying consumerism while also hocking a “deluxe edition box set” of the album that retails for $95.99, as that exact phrase is mentioned by guest Elton John in the spoken-word bridge of the song, among a laundry list of more mundane products like sunglasses, teeth whitener, and anti-aging cream.
Admittedly, it seems more like a face-saving move than a droll commentary on the state of being a contemporary music artist. But even if that sentiment is a little trite, it works in the context of the song— an ambitious, nearly 10-minute track that combines dance beats and lush vocal harmonies with dark soundscapes and sinister industrial undertones.
Wilson built a cult following with 2013’s The Raven That Refused to Sing and 2015’s Hand. Cannot. Erase. by offering a modern take on classic progressive rock, heavily alluding to the past without sounding too retro. But for all of the diverse sounds and influences that his music has synthesized to date, he possesses a particularly strong pop sensibility. Musically, The Future Bites picks up where 2018’s To the Bone left off, but with the pop elements pushed even further to the forefront. Gone are the lengthy solos, extended instrumental sections, and multi-part suites, and in their place are concise songs (“Personal Shopper” notwithstanding) with standard verse/chorus/verse structures and radio-ready refrains.
On the majority of the album’s tracks, guitars and drums take a backseat to keyboards and propulsive electronic rhythms. This allows Wilson to use his somewhat limited vocal range to great effect; studio-crafted harmonies have always been the musician’s stock in trade, but they’re perhaps even more powerful when they aren’t forced to compete with the backing of a full rock band. The sparse arrangement of “King Ghost,” meanwhile, allows the strength of Wilson’s plainspoken tenor to come through in the verses, before his gentle falsetto, so redolent of Thom Yorke, floats over a crest of beats during the chorus.
Elsewhere, with its readymade funk basslines and generic female backing vocals, “Eminent Sleaze” fails to make much of an impression, and “12 Things I Forgot” is lightweight alt-rock that wouldn’t sound out of place playing over the end credits of a rom-com. Wilson is most at home when trafficking in melancholia, and two of the album’s ballads, “Man of the People” and “Count of Unease,” stand alongside his best work.
The Future Bites is neither a huge stylistic departure nor the betrayal that many Wilson diehards have claimed it to be. Conceptually, the album revolves around a post-apocalyptic vision of an overly materialist society, and while the electro-pop trappings are almost never “happy,” they serve as a slick backdrop to the dystopian landscape Wilson envisions.
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