Black Holes and Revelations – Muse
Muse – XL Recordings
Could it be that Muse have finally found a cure for their flatulence? I’ve always had a problem with Muse, finding their sound pompous and overblown with no real power behind it, like stone-cladding a Barratt home and sticking a couple of lions at the end of the drive. Their three albums thus far – and especially the ludicrously over-rated last album ‘Absolution’ – have always felt like cracking one out fancy-style, with a palm of olive oil rather than a spot of soap – the end result (including the vague feeling of dejection and disappointment afterwards) is always the same, no matter the method.
How surprised I am then, that Muse’s magnificent powerhouse that is new album ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ rectifies – almost – everything that once was wrong. Firstly, Matt Bellamy has mellowed the nasal wail that rather suited his ratty visage to come up with a smoother vocal sound that well, sounds a lot like Thom Yorke when he’s going for the belty bits. In fact, you can hear Radiohead all over the epic tour-de-force of musicianship here – but it’s as if Yorke & co. finished ‘OK Computer’ and went and listened to Queen rather than the Warp back catalogue.
Secondly, Muse begin and end ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ on such impressive high notes that it’s hard to actually remember the middle. ‘Take A Bow’ is a song that most bands would reserve to close their albums. Not Muse. Oh no. Instead, strings perform a maypole around a Dubai-esque construction site of synthesisers and immensely clattering drums as Bellamy informs us that “you will burn in hell… you will burn in hell…” Phew. Can we have a cup of tea now, please?
Of course not – there are so many damn arpeggios on this record you could erect a sonic campsite with it, and with Rich Costey’s superb production of all the dense layers of multi-instrumentation, the whole is carried forth on great stern waves of water, plasma, black matter… who knows what? Because Muse are as peculiarly cosmically-fixated as ever, ‘Starlight’ even seeming to be a love song to a space vessel. Current single ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ is a curious lift from the cattleprod electronic tautness of Suede’s ‘Head Music’ blended with Prince. Eh? ‘Map Of The Problematique’, on the other hand, mixes roiling piano with spacey guitars, huge portentous drum fills and an overarching choral-meets-disco sound that seems to balance on a quivering tightrope of reason.
From then on, the album does sag rather, which is why the strong beginning and end are so handy. The ballad of ‘Invincible’ is more Muse-by-numbers, Bellamy bleating and the music rather thin, while ‘Soldier’s Poem’ is a plaintive acoustic piece with lyrics I’m afraid to pay to much attention to for fear of drowning in a sea of mawk. ‘Exo-Politics’ is somewhat lumpy both in word and song.
Thankfully ‘Assassin’ – which sounds not unlike an indie Rammstein – is much better, and ‘City Of Delusion’ is enticingly unsure whether it wants to soundtrack the closing credits of an epic film, the apocalypse, or a bunch of dancing gypsies.
But that’s nothing to closing track ‘Knights Of Cydonia’, the most insanely proggy thing Muse have ever done, with massive multi-tracked vocals, burbling synthesisers, and a build to a climax akin to a pyroclastic cloud thundering its way down a volcano towards a doomed town, the populace scrambling to flee in boats as pumice pounds down around them.
Yet despite all this gilded superfluity and vaulting ambition, I am more than sure that ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ isn’t an album that I’m going to be picking off the shelf in the future. For like the tin man, Muse are still in search of a heart and soul – the weaker tracks here are the ones where they try and bare something that’s non-existent. But as a bold statement and almost clinical exercise in making a profoundly massive album of wild ideas and musical overachievement, ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ transports Muse into a different dimension to their contemporaries.
Luke Turner for Playlouder
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