Their common prodigy changed several titles untill they decided to stop on Muse. Muse remain a national treasure, but not one that Nicolas Cage is likely to find.Young musicians Matthew Bellamy, Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard organized the Muse trio during their colleage study. Someone should tell him that the truth lies in his band’s very capable hands. MK Ultra is a coruscating live favourite-in-waiting, while I Belong to You has enough 70s piano-driven bounce to make you forget all the grim paranoia lying beneath the surface.Īt times Bellamy can sound like a rock equivalent of Mulder as he wails “I want the truth!” on the rabble-rousing Unnatural Selection. Having said that, quoting Chopin or Saint-Saëns verbatim isn’t necessarily maturation either, but time and again Muse remind you of how good they are at making your pulse race. The mismatch between a rapidly maturing musical vision and chunks of John Perkins’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman puts Muse firmly back in the X File marked ‘life’s not fair and someone’s to blame’. Still, this final folly/masterstroke works well because, despite its grand designs, it has a touch of ELO magic about it.Īnd speaking of grand designs, The Resistance retains Bellamy’s preposterous adherence to conspiracy theories – it’s maybe this that stops it being a solid gold classic. Pop sensibilities create a certain tension throughout, although by the closing three-part ‘symphony’, Exogenesis, they’ve jettisoned such relative restraint for string-drenched overkill, albeit laced with incomprehensible semi-sci-fi shenanigans. While owing the late Delia Derbyshire some royalties with its Dr Who theme glitter stomp, it shows that Muse know how to whip up proper chart action. It’s not that they’re taking themselves too seriously, more that you’re never sure if the listener is supposed to. There is a distinct development here, but a self-produced heaping on of classical motifs and Queen-style histrionics isn’t necessarily the one we were hoping for.
The latter was an audacious leap into the hallowed area where cosmic meets commercial in a way not seen since Dark Side of the Moon. Stuffing their albums with sing-along pomp and circumstance, their days as sub-prog pariahs have long since passed.Ĭomparing The Resistance with its 2006 predecessor, Black Holes and Revelations, is never going to be easy. Less earnest and self-regarding than Radiohead and less free trade-hippie than Coldplay, Muse know exactly how guilty a pleasure they can be.
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