Billy Corgan: The future embrace, Stephen Malkmus: Face the truth

Billy Corgan: The future embrace

Herald rating: ****
Label: Warner Music

Stephen Malkmus: Face the truth

Herald rating: ***
Label: Spunk

Corgan and Malkmus are survivors from the 90s alternative rock explosion now carrying on under their own names and probably seeing a lot of sentences starting with the phrase "the former frontman ... "

For Corgan, that's now a double description. Having disbanded the Smashing Pumpkins, he put together Zwan, a supergroup of sorts who lasted just one fine 2003 album. The band's longevity suggested, again, that Corgan was not the easiest man to work with.

The sound of some of Zwan's songs - and Pumpkins songs such as 1979 as well as Corgan guesting in New Order's live line-up - suggested that Moby wasn't the only bald-headed American star with a fixation on the veteran British band.

So it's perhaps little wonder that first solo album The Future Embrace sounds like Corgan indulging his 80s goths-with-synthesiser urges, as well as having run out of friends. Yes, he does have the Cure's Robert Smith singing back-up on a mordant cover of the Bee Gee's To Love Somebody - sounding as if the wedding tune turned up at a funeral by mistake - and a few other guests.

But mostly this is Corgan's snarl, the sharpest edge in a sound serrated by synths, primitive electronic beats and sci-fi guitars, some of which echo Bowie's key albums of the late 70s.

Fortunately, it's not all mechanical melancholy. The likes of Mina Loy and The Camera Eye come with sparkling tunes; A100 pulsates with the voltage of early Nine Inch Nails; and New Order could have used the likes of Walking Shade to perk up their lacklustre most recent effort.

Its lapse into shoe-gazing dreaminess at the end makes it drag. And appreciation of Corgan's adenoidal vocals is a prerequisite. But it sounds like the former stadium alt-rocker is happy in his newfound austerity.

Malkmus would probably hate The Future Embrace. On the song Range Life from Pavement's best album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994) he happily insulted the Smashing Pumpkins ("they don't have no function/I don't understand what they mean/And I could really give a [expletive]"). That was also in the days when Malkmus' lyrics occasionally made sense, even if the band's music was never designed that way.

After straightening up a little on his first two solo albums, this time he's going for maximum freak-out. He's at his wiggiest on No More Shoes, which starts off in Simon and Garfunkel territory before stretching out to eight minutes via a lengthy guitar solo that takes us nowhere special.

The album has its enjoyably direct moments, such as Baby C'mon, the Syd Barretteseque psychedelic pop of Mama, and the country amble of Freeze The Saints.

But as lyrically and musically colourful as it is, Face the Truth simply doesn't stick as much as Malkmus' earlier albums.

It's a triumph of idiosyncrasy over song. And Malkmus may be a far more likeable guy than Corgan, but his album's much harder to love.