The Juan Maclean - The Future Will Come
DFA/Popfrenzy/Inertia
By Joanna Lowry
On his much-anticipated second release, John MacLean (Juan Maclean) is lent a hand by DFA labelmates Gerry Fuchs (from !!!), Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel (Holy Ghost!) and Nancy Whang (LCD Soundsystem). Together they churn out some gritty, dancefloor-wrecking grooves.
The bleeps, blips and mutating keyboard synths of The Future Will Come are a throwback to the herky-jerky heyday of Devo and the Human League, and, as far as New York new wave inspired projects go, The Juan Maclean lives up to contemporaries Hercules and Love Affair. The Future Will Come provides all the bongo-driven percussion, electro-funk hooks and Daft Punk-esque robot references that any wannabe new-raver donning a fluoro wife-beater, or Brooklyn cool-kid throwing a house party, could ask for.
The album is bookended with club hits but somewhere in the middle its poppy sheen devolves into a synthy dirge. It ebbs and flows through the wistful acid-house groove of 'No Time' and the mid-tempo funk of 'Accusations', but after a while Whang's coquettish vocals and Mclean's flat, monotone voice become tiresome. Lyrically the album mimics an ongoing lovers' quarrel and therefore flirts with cliché. The sparse, self-pitying piano solo of 'Human Disaster', while not a disaster, falls short of success.
It does, however, segue into 'Happy House' - 12 and a half minutes of cosmic disco delirium that propels you into another galaxy. Listening to this final track, the lopsided headphone bop becomes a nod in agreement with Whang when she sings, "I thank you for just being so damn excellent."
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