By RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: * * * )
If Radiohead had taken those comparisons to 70s prog-rock back to the practice room and Thom Yorke had fancied the "rock god" job title, then this is how they might have sounded.
So any good?
Well, say this for Muse frontman-guitarist Matt Bellamy, he's
not backwards in coming forwards.
The second album by the trio is likely the most OTT thing you'll hear from a British band this year.
The first track New Born starts with a baroque piano flourish carrying Bellamy's singing (out-of-breath choirboy) before its second movement begins with a firefight of guitars managing to get a Flight of the Bumblebee solo in between the Jeff Buckley-fronts-Queen choruses. Then track two Bliss starts and is underpinned by an arpeggiated Moog-plays-Bach swirl over which Muse pummel and screech in fevered fashion.
And so it goes through Space Dementia (yet more florid ivory-tickling and steroid-abusing guitar), Hyper Music (The Cult covers Hendrix); Citizen Erased (Radiohead play the Beastie Boys' Sabotage in a down-tuned key), Microcuts (Smashing Pumpkins do opera).
Yes, it is overwrought but frequently quite musically astonishing, not to mention thrillingly loud.
But it's hard to feel much emotional connection to Bellamy's tortured delivery or grand musical design (especially as it feels plain unhealthy to take it all in at one sitting).
Yet you can't help but admire the sheer bellicose ambition of it all.
Muse, it seems wants to be smarter, louder, more dramatic, and more grandiloquent than the rest. And even if you think they've disappeared completely up their own fundamental orifices doing it, you still get the feeling that many people will fall madly in love with them for doing just that.
Label: Mushroom
