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| In fact, you can listen to the whole album here, a lot of which is fairly bog-standard fare, but there are a couple of stand-out tracks, one of which is the power-metal-esque "Knights of Cydonia", which is the most joyous thing I've heard them do. I think my problem with Muse is that although their supposed modus operandi (overblown operatic space-rock) appeals to me, the execution is frankly dire in a lot of cases - I simply can't listen to Bellamy wailing over a great mushy wodgy in which I can't discern any kind of harmonic structure. However, when they go for a more rhythmic sound and cut out the great washes of sound that get in the way of actual playing, I think they're really rather fun - to whit, Hyper Music, Thoughts of a Dying Atheist, Supermassive Black Hole as opposed to the mushy nonsense that is much of Absolution, for example. I think the problem is that they're very capable of making fun music (and you certainly don't write a track entitled "Knights of Cydonia" without some self-mockery, surely) so it's all the more depressing when they don't. The other thing that's always appealed to me is that a lot of the content of the lyrics exists in a bizarre Cold-War world of espionage and informed by theoretical physics. There's angst in "Rule By Secrecy", certainly, but it's that of a secret agent for a global conspiracy whose very family don't know his true profession. In other words, the fun kind. I'm really unsure how anyone could, for example, take "Supermassive Black Hole" particularly at face value - it's Hawkwind meets Jamairoquai meets Queen. In space. And all the better for it. |
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