Probably my most anticipated release of the past couple of years, Muse’s “The Resistance” has finally landed itself into my grubby mitts, ready to stumble it’s way into my ear canals.
The Resistance - Muse
Like before, Muse blend a mixture of guitars, synthesizers and orchestral strings into an epic flurry of whim and wonder. The only difference is that this time, Muse have been set free from the grasp of the music industry’s talons and their bite is much worse this time round.
The album starts with uproarious “Uprising”, which will certainly sound familiar to anyone who’s been keeping an eye on Muse’s recent activity. With an astonishing performance at their home town of Teignmouth, Uprising is an excellent start to the new album, picking up where Knights of Cydonia left off. The song certainly has a catchy rhythm, with plenty of synth and guitar riffs to go around. Watching the video, you can tell the tongue-in-cheek nature of the teddy bears, but it fits so accordingly with who and what Muse are; as always, they’re spreading a serious message with a sense of irony and playfulness. They certainly aren’t taking themselves seriously, and maybe that’s why Muse are so good at what they do.
Following Uprising is “Resistance”, a bizarre yet awesome mixture of Thoughts of a Dying Atheist, “I Need a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler, sadly, “Nude” by Radiohead (sadly in the sense that it’ll just be used against them by critics). Personally, I love this intro. It sounds wonderfully dramatic, before bursting into a typical rock love song, twisting and warping between moods and emotions, wrapped around a cheesy but catchy chorus. With the line “You’ll wake the thought police”, you certainly know where Matt Bellamy gets a lot of his inspiration.
But this isn’t where the cheese ends. “Undisclosed Desires” is almost the pinnacle of cheese, with pizzicato violins and slap bass. As bad as it sounds, oddly again, Muse pull it off in some sort of bizarre head-nodding, foot-tapping exhibition of talent; rubbing in the fact that there’s nothing that Muse can’t do. The hilarity caused by Matt Bellamy singing “Please me. Show me how it’s done” is unbelievable, yet somehow a smirk fails to creep out because of the emotion driving behind the song.
Now if Undisclosed Desires wasn’t enough, Muse just slap some parmesan on the album with “United States of Eurasia”. After an online scavenger hunt, Muse released United States of Eurasia as a downloadable track in July. Stealing inspiration for glam-rock style crescendos and harmonies from Queen, Muse delivers a completely and utterly ridiculous track, with Arabian style bridges and a harmonious chanting of “Eura-SAI! SIA! SIA!”. This track was certainly not meant to be taken seriously – even Matt Bellamy admits that the entire band cracked up during the recording process… But is this a bad thing? I think not. The album has a lot of charm and whim, and is certainly something that no other band would be able to get away with. Imagine what would happen if Green Day had recorded this. I think the world would have been up in arms! To gather a true sense of how phenomenal this track is, you need to watch a couple of Muse’s live acts and apply that to your imagination. The track then finishes with “Collateral Damage”, a sweet rendition of a Chopin piece, before a clip of a rocket blasting transitions us into “Guiding Light”.
Guiding Light is a typical love song, starting with gentle synths and a mellow but rhythmic bass and drum drone in the background. After a short while, the guitar kicks in with a whoppingly meaty guitar solo; nothing fancy (reminiscent of Sing For Absolution, although not in the same league), but certainly a solo to awe at. In my opinion, this song is one of the biggest evidences that Matt Bellamy’s singing style has changed. Whether or not for the better is debatable, but it’s much deeper than before and certainly more mature.
“Unnatural Selection” starts with a Megalomania style organ, with Matt Bellamy singing softly over, before the entire band kicks in with a guitar riff that you could never imagine Muse playing. This fast-tempo, distorted vocal speed rock song get s even the most stubborn of feet moving, before heading into a Billy Talent-meets-classical style chorus. Complete with “Hey!”s, the song is definitely one of the heavier songs on the album. But that’s not all – in traditional Muse style, the song dives into a waltzy lull of heavy bass and bluesy guitar. You can imagine the band playing in a dingy pub, hats covering their faces and the sorrows of a thousand years at their feet – a complete contrast to the whole “droplets in the ocean” thing going on earlier… But it’s not gone! It quickly comes back before rounding off with a riff or two, leading us into “MK Ultra”, which starts with a beautiful synth melody.
Beautiful is the only word I can use to describe MK Ultra. With an emotional synth melody, and a chord progression that would make anyone at least a little bit sad, mixed in with arpeggio strings. One of my favourite tracks on the album, the song starts leads you into a false sense of security. It gradually slows down before bursting into a typical Muse-style riff, similar in duration to the one in Invincible. Personally, this song reminds me heavily of the music from the 2005 series of Doctor Who, with it’s “Oooooo”s and fast tempo. Definitely a song to listen to time and time again.
To penultimate song on the album is I Belong To You, where Matt Bellamy sings a section in French. Yes; French. Personally, I’m not hugely keen on this song. I like some parts of the song, but other parts are certainly not doing it for me; but then again, I was never really a huge fan of Soldier’s Poem, so it’s not the first time I’ve thought a Muse song to be a bit dud. But this is definitely much better than Soldier’s Poem. The song starts funky, before diving into a solo from Matt and his piano, where the rest of the band crescendos with the orchestra. Like MK Ultra, the song then jumps back to where it left off and finishes fairly tamely, with the inclusion of a bass clarinet solo. How does that work!? God knows… but it’s oddly fitting.
Finally, the epitome of the album; “Exogenesis: Symphony”. This was the biggest excitement to the upcoming album. Muse had said that they always had this idea and working under a producer meant they could never have the freedom to complete it. Well, they’ve finished it and it’s spectacular. I don’t say that lightly. Again, the song is typical Doctor Who music, but I love it. Part 1 (Overture) starts with arpeggio strings and timpani, before Matt Bellamy kicks in his signature falsetto (something which has been rather lacking until this point). After three minutes of immense strings, the guitar picks up and emits a sound so beautiful that maybe one cannot even contemplate the sheer amazingness of everything to do with Muse. Up until this point, I had been losing faith in the album and was expecting another “so-so” track, but boy was I wrong. I am finding it hard to write about it.
Part 2 (Cross-Pollination) starts with typical Matt Bellamy piano-wanking (similar to that of Butterflies & Hurricanes), only this time he’s joined by strings and synth chorus. It’s beautiful. I was listening to this last night and I almost fell asleep. But in traditional Muse style, Matt doesn’t give too much and the piano cowers back a little to something more familiar (as if it looked around and realised it was overdoing it a little, but just in time) and a waltz kicks in… then before you know it- BAM. The entire band is playing a gigantic, symphonic ear-bursting blast of awesomeness, before reverting back to the piano-wanking of earlier, which has now become the more modest option.
Finally, Part 3 (Redemption) rounds of what is a now-brilliant album, with an emotional introduction of piano and strings. I almost felt a tear come to my eye. To think that this is MUSE. MUSE. You could imagine this being the soundtrack of Matt Bellamy’s biography as he looks back over the early days of his career, up until this point. All the struggles, all the good times, etc. and now this final build up. Some say the lyrics of this song are meant to be about politics (“Let’s start over again”) but could it really be about the band, and their approach to the next album? They’ve now done everything they’ve ever wanted to do; released 5 top-selling albums, filled Wembley stadium not once but twice, and finished what is the most ambitious product they’ve ever done; Exogenesis. The name redemption certainly fits the song appropriately and it does leave you with a sense of forgiveness towards the rest of the album’s silliness. A truly beautiful song.
To conclude, Muse’s Resistance isn’t their best album, but it certainly has some tracks that make it far from a bad album. Uprising, MK Ultra and Exogenesis alone make it worth it, and even if Muse didn’t take themselves completely seriously, they made up for that with the final three tracks. Without my Muse Fan cap on, I would give this album a 9/10. With my Muse cap on, I give it a 10. That’s the honest truth. At their first attempt of producing their own album, they’ve done a very good job. I’ve been self-producing my own music and it’s taken me about five years to get the hang of it properly; Muse managed in six months (Albeit with a little bit of help). I don’t think one person’s opinion of this album can be the defining opinion, and I find it hard to recommend this album (although I do!), but I urge everyone to go out and buy it and see what you make of it. For me, it’s excellent, a superb album, and I’m glad I’m going to see Muse now it’s released, rather than having seen them before. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you give it a chance you may find that at least some aspects of it may be yours. Good job, Muse.
The other day I ordered an M-Audio Kestation 61ES, a MIDI keyboard thing that will let me play the piano into my computer for when I’m making music. I figured that purchasing this would help me save time writing MIDI (on ‘Unlucky For Some’ I ended up playing my computer keyboard in some songs…), and I’ve always wanted to play the piano properly; I just never had one at home to learn on. So I splashed out and spent £150 on a keyboard. However, I saw that I could get the same keyboard with a sustain pedal added on for the same price on Amazon and bought that instead. The only problem is that the Keyboard is still on it’s way to me, despite the sustain pedal arriving tomorrow. Here’s my review of the pedal.
Like a lot of other packaging on the market, this box was sealed with two pieces of sellotape. This certainly isn’t the most durable way of sealing a package, but it’s worked well over the years and you can’t fault it. After all, I wouldn’t want it to be wrapped in duct tape… that would just be hard to open.
After peeling the first piece of sellotape off, disaster struck. Unfortunately, the second piece of sellotape wouldn’t come off the package and I had to resort to using scissors to cut off the remaining piece. I don’t see why, as surely both the pieces of sellotape came from the same roll, and should have the same stickiness? I don’t know what happened here, but it’s shabby. Shame on you, M-Audio.
Finally I got the box open. Inside was the prize. I have to say, having seen the size of the pedal and the size of the box, I give M-Audio points for saving packaging. Some companies ship massive cardboard boxes for stuff like this (my Logitech MX Revolution came in quite a ridiculously over the top box, with a flap that let you see the mouse in the packaging and so on) so M-Audio did a good job on this. Since I share my name with a tree -admittedly not a tree that is used for cardboard-, I say “thank you”.
Once I took the pedal out, though, I tossed the box on the floor. Despite it’s good points, it just has no function other than storing the pedal and thus I do not care for it any longer. Goodbye box, I hardly knew ye.
So there I was, left with the pedal in a weird plasticky coating. Naturally, I took this off and…
…threw it on the floor with the box. See you in hell.
Now I had to take the weird plastic thing off the pedal. It was weird so…
…I took it off…
… And put it with the rest of the trash. Hasta la vista, baby!
Anyway, now I had my pedal almost ready to go. So I took the cord out (which was quite a struggle, since it was firmly lodged under the pedal) and untied it all.
Now I had my pedal all ready to go, except for another weird plasticky bit on the end. It was like they’d dipped it in cling film or something. Removing this proved to be a challenge…
… so I removed the rest of it with tweezers. There were still a few bits left on, despite my rigorous pulling, so that was bad. Plus points to M-Audio there. You should have used less clingy cling-film.
Once finished, I put the pedal on the floor, in it’s new home. There, it rested like a warrior who’d just come back from war; like a mouse that had just been chased by cats; like a sloth. It gave off a sense of peace and tranquility, as if everything in the world was suddenly alright. Suddenly, a strong urge came over me; something I couldn’t resist at all. It was like a true calling, echoing through space and time right to this point where I stood before the this pedal. I quickly rushed over to the other side of my room to grab an object which would help me reach fulfilment…
I plugged the pedal into my guitar. As expected, nothing happened. I shrugged. This is why you don’t listen to the thoughts you have when you’re on a hallucinogens, kids.