After a 14-month gestation, The Juan MacLean’s 12-inch single success “Happy House” has finally blossomed into sophomore LP The Future Will Come. For MacLean, the long cultivation yields abundantly, with new wave and cosmic influences sprucing the framework of solid disco-house. DFAll-Stars Gerry Fuchs of !!!, Nick Millhiser & Alex Frankel of Holy Ghost!, and vocalist Nancy Whang guide MacLean through his robotic coming-of-age narrative masterfully. Despite some darker moments, their truly colorful playing keeps MacLean’s introspective robo-protagonist grounded, halting his steely gloom on the brink of short-circuit. In a sense, The Future Will Come is like a robot growing from the earth, often cold and exact, but equally organic and fresh.
The album’s first half sets off a bit manically, reeling from a pre-album breakup on “The Simple Life.” From here, MacLean endures some growing pains; each track holds up individually, but there is some clunking along as MacLean is rewired. The Hercules & Love Affair string arrangement on single “One Day,” for instance, doesn’t seem to jive with the vocoded Italo-cheese of “A New Bot,” which in turn seems to have little in common with the solemn horn-infused house ballad “Tonight.”
But from there, The Future Will Come blooms incrementally, driven from the ground by the grittiest keyboard performance heard on a dance album in some time. The percussion from a stable of synthesizers and ivories emulates the raw, soulful pierce of Whang’s pipes, bringing both energies to a head. “No Time” is particularly exemplary, as MacLean and Whang find computer love across verses that reveal the lubricious details of robot-on-woman flirtations. The trope is sustained by sonic counterparts: a stammering organ jitters against the drunken wonk of the other, as the fling climaxes in an impressively compact build.
Yet Whang’s strong performance is double-edged, as it exposes an uneven vocal effort from MacLean. At times, his melancholy breaks the deadlock grapple for mood between heavy instrumentation and Whang’s effortless pep. But with MacLean sharing leads, “The Station” drags like an awkward karaoke duet of The Human League, and the otherwise strong title track sounds as if MacLean forgot to boot up his voice box.
Still, while “The Station” stumbles and “Human Disaster” is a strange melo-operatic turn, the remaining tracks — including album-ending trump card “Happy House” — never derail. “Launch me into space,” Whang echoes to herself on the swan song, an ambition requiring both man and machine. This makes the inclusion of MacLean’s most galvanizing single seem appropriate rather than a cheap afterthought. It marks a dance album somewhat evolved to the point that even a robot could come around on its human potency.
1. The Simple Life
2. The Future Will Come
3. One Day
4. A New Bot
5. Tonight
6. No Time
7. Accusations
8. The Station
9. Human Disaster
10. Happy House
More about: The Juan MacLean
