Muse — Official Muse Websites

The second instalment of our Review The Resistance competition is below courtesy of Gavin Greene.

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The Resistance

Understated, Muse are not. A decade has passed since Showbiz; ten years in which this Devon three-piece have constantly evolved and developed, leaving boundaries well-behind, and winning over any doubters with each new album.

From the panoramic secret location of the playback, high above the bustling streets of London, the themes running throughout this album are very believable. From the opening track, and first single, Uprising, there is a definite ‘us’ and ‘them’, and an increasing sense of fear and impending despair. A foot-stamping, thumb-clicking opener, this tune wouldn’t sound out of place in the Tardis’ sound system.

Spooky, haunting synths herald the second track of the album, Resistance, while pulsing drums reverberate in the background. Bellamy incites paranoia from the start, wondering if ‘our secret’s safe’, with soaring vocals over a wandering piano, before a rousing chorus, which sees Howard and Wolstenholme joining in with vocal duties.

The majority of fans have already heard United States of Eurasia, after a worldwide treasure hunt involving encrypted USB keys and secret agents, but it is still a stand-out track on the album. During the seven minutes of the track, Muse take a tour of Eurasia, taking in Arabia, and spend a while visiting Mr Mercury and Mr May. The Chopin piano outro takes a whole new perspective when peppered with the sounds of children playing among missile sounds, and leaves the listener contemplative.

Undisclosed Desires begins with pizzicato strings, layered with deep, rhythmical drumming. The most radio-friendly of the album, this track clearly takes influences from contemporary R’n’B, as well as more classical artists. If Timbaland and Fauré somehow decided to collaborate, this is what they would produce.

Guiding light opens with a battery of drums, before Matt enters with a huge, anthemic melody. Pounding, distorted bass lies under a sea of fresh, clean guitar. It gradually builds up, with Bellamy claiming to be ‘cold and confused, with no guiding light left in sight’, before making way for a Brian May-esque shredding guitar solo, accompanied with lashings of trade-mark Bellamy falsetto.

Unnatural selection opens with a veritable Lloyd-Webber homage, before moving to a heavy, bassy riff, supported by vocals reminiscent of Absolution’s ‘The Small Print’. Bellamy urges the listener to ‘push it beyond peaceful protest’, while acknowledging that we are mere ‘droplets in the ocean’ compared to the ever-present ‘them’. The heaviest song on the album, it ends with a huge riff, with palm-muting very prominent towards the end.

A Nintendo apocalypse is waiting in the next track. Heavy, pulsating synthesizers join flourishes of strings on MK Ultra, a track aptly named after a CIA mind-control from the 1950s. Conspiratorial lyrics such as ‘all of history deleted with one stroke’ accompanied with more meaty Manson riffs, which wouldn’t sound misplaced at a RATM gig.

I Belong To You is a love-song, but never quite a ballad, thanks in part to the inclusion of a vibraslap, which will undoubtedly send everyone back to their primary-school music lessons. A choir of voices fades out with the piano to make way for Bellamy to sing the middle section in French, and produces a pretty commendable effort at conquering the French accent. The inclusion of a bass clarinet solo should sound ridiculous, but somehow, it works, weaved in among the rich timbre of sound.

A shivering tremolo of strings introduces Overture, the first of the much-anticipated three-part symphony, and the finale of The Resistance. As the quivering violins are gradually joined by cellos, bass and brass, there is an impending sense that you are about to witness something big. An arpeggiatic crescendo gives way to a thundering, haunting harmony of Bellamy’s combined vocals and guitar, leading into the second movement: Cross-Pollination. It bursts into life with a cacophony of piano, reminiscent of ‘Piano Thing’, the B-Side to 2001’s New Born, before surrendering into a lulling waltz, while still keeping the sense of paranoia afloat with allusions to ‘toxic clouds breaching the atmosphere’, and being urged to ‘tell us your final wish’. It then settles back into the piano from the introduction, paving the way for the third movement. Redemption is also a heavily piano-driven track, of which the intro brings to mind Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’. Bellamy pleads to let us ‘start over again’, claiming that ‘this time we’ll get it right’. The final chapter in this plea for atonement, it would be hard to imagine a more atmospherically epic way to close an album.

As an overall opus, there are far too few adjectives or superlatives to describe it succinctly. With The Resistance, Bellamy and Co. have entered classical territory, and what an entrance to make. Apocalyptic, operatic, haunting, and grandiloquent: The Muse juggernaut is well and truly in motion once again.

Gavin Greene, September 2009