Muse - The Resistance
Helium 3/Warner
By Andrew P Street
Muse, in the nicest possible way, have never been afraid to
look stupid. From their earliest days they didn't shy away from using the big
rock gestures to the point of becoming (at least in my mind) The Interplanetary
Styx Of The Future – which is the future of unisex jumpsuits and crystal robots that somehow learn about human feelings rather than, say, digital technology.
The Resistance continues the journey from Black Holes &
Revelations in terms of creating outer space rock opera, to the point that one
expects a libretto to accompany the album. 'Uprising' sounds like the band's
pitch for a new Dr Who theme: a big syncopated glam stomp with lyrics about
Them, the ones that won't control us and keep trying to degrade us and
so on, complete with a Glitter Band "Hey!" chants and lines like "It's time the
fat-cats had a heart attack". 'Resistance' follows with a (synthesised) piano
melody stolen from Coldplay before the Queenisms kick in for the chorus, while 'Undisclosed Desires' is contemporary r'n'b via Violator-era Depeche Mode and
the 'United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage)' is a red-hot-go at writing
their own 'Bohemian Rhapsody' before they slip into Chopin's 'Nocturne in E-flat
Major Op. 9 No. 2' for some reason. It feeds into the simple, strident 'Guiding
Light', with Matt Bellamy sounding more like Bono than ever while 'Unnatural
Selection' is the guitar pounding Muse of 'Muscle Museum', at least, until the
swampy second movement kicks in, at which point the band seem set to burst into Abbey Road's 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' and then the conspiracy is laid out
on 'MK Ultra' (named after the CIA's covert mind-control-drug
programme in the 50s and 60s), set aside the lively piano of 'I Belong To You', which is one of the few rock songs in recent memory to boast a bass clarinet solo.
So far, so Muse: but then the album ends with the three
movements of the 'Exogenesis: Symphony', which is exactly what it sounds like. Had
Radiohead continued down the path of 'Paranoid Android' and gotten themselves
an orchestra, this is what it would have sounded like: and it works better than you'd have given the band credit for.
It's as unsubtle and histrionic as every other Muse record
and while the playing is undeniably strong, it's still infused with that vague
riduculousness that has characterised everything the band's done over the last couple of albums. Still, in the event that
Galactic Star Prince Zarkon sends his robo-armies to subjugate the Earth with the dreaded Omega Ray, this album could well be our only hope.
You've read what we think. Now tell us what you think.