I picked up a copy of Muse’s new album – The Resistance – on Saturday morning. Well, when I say “picked up”, I mean downloaded on iTunes. I’m starting to adjust to the intangibility of online music purchases. Slowly. The vernacular will probably catch up one day too… but enough about me.
I’ve listened to the album a bunch of times now – and I’ve enjoyed it. I want to sit down one day and listen to the entire Muse catalogue from Showbiz to now – I think they’ve undergone a pretty interesting development while still maintaining the same fundamentals that make them popular.
I still think Absolution is their best album, then probably Origin of Symmetry – but I’ve listened to those significantly more than the latest two.
What I really like about Muse is that they seem to really enjoy being in a band. They have fun. They lead fans on treasure hunts around the world and turn their concerts into massive stage shows. This album smacks of that with the hat tip to Queen in the ultimately silly and over the top United States of Eurasia. They simultaneously take themselves pretty seriously, and Matt Bellamy is a serious musician. The three symphony pieces at the end are musically exciting, but the lyrics across the album are not quite as profound as you expect they think they are. But from a band who gave us, in Showbiz, in the song Muscle Museum, the rhyming couplet:
“I have played in every toilet. But you still want to spoil it”
I’ve never really expected all that much from them lyrically.
I like it though. It’s catchy. And it’s undeniably Muse.