(MUSE) Britain's rock eccentrics' latest space odyssey goes one step beyond

Q Magazine 

October 2009 

Review - NEW ALBUMS

MUSE: The Resistance 

Imagine of Bono casually proposed that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the US government. Or Chris Martin insisted that the human race evolved as a result of aliens tampering with monkey DNA. Or Noel Gallagher maintained that The Beatles were a front for a clandestine think tank intent on brainwashing the youth of America. And yet Matt Bellamy, the only other homegrown rock star capable of filling Wembley Stadium twice over, regularly expounded such opinions in the course of promoting Muse's thrillingly provocative fourth album Black Holes And Revelations without generating so much as an apoplectic Daily Mail editorial. For shame. There was a time when enemies of the state blowing the whistle on government cover-ups and media lies could have expected to meet with tragic accidents and freakish, fatal, acts of God. Now it seems you get a wink, a pinch on the cheek, and a couple of Brit Awards. 

  If Muse's greatest triumph has been bringing in bringing the outrageousness and even unthinkable to the mainstream - and Black Holes And Revelations has now sold north of 800,000 copies in the UK - happily such success has done nothing to alleviate their frontman's bleak, apocalyptic worldview. If, as eminent British psychiatrist Dr Daniel Freeman postulated in 2008, the early 21st century defining characteristic is paranoia, then Matt Bellamy is the shrill, doom-laden voice of our age.   

Expanding upon the sentiments contained in Black Holes And Revelations' Invincible ("During the struggle, they will pull us down") The Resistance is chock-full of repression, tyranny and authoritarian abuse, dark warnings of what "they" are about to unleash. In Bellamy's world, we're permanently under surveillance: they're out there, observing, recording, cataloguing, classifying. "Will they find our hiding place?" he frets on the album's title track. Just because he's paranoid doesn't mean they're not after him. 

  In a sense, the album's narrative has already been foretold, by the band themselves. In the 2004 video for Sing For Absolution, Muse were cast as fearless adventurers descending to Earth from another galaxy, ultimately finding themselves gazing in horror at the ruined remains of the Houses Of Parliament, democracy having been snuffed out as mankind tore themselves apart. The Resistance can be viewed as the glossy prequel. Here, our heroes are battling to hold onto love in the midst of chaos, defiantly vowing to "rise up and take the power back" in a society where there's "red tape to keep the truth confined," before ultimately deciding that our planet is doomed and the only solution is to set the controls for the heart of elsewhere in the universe to attempt "starting over again." Cheerful stuff. 

  It's not all gloom, however. As ever with Muse, who once told this writer, "most bands are scared of ridicule, we embrace it," there are moments on The Resistance which are so joyously eccentric that you can't help but laugh out loud: the inexplicable arrival of Acker Bilk-style clarinet in I Belong To You, for instance the massed choral chants of "Eur-Asia" in the spectacularly unhinged United States of Eurasia, the moment you realise that the title track's portentous, ominous atmosphere could be the intro to Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out For A Hero. 

  Still, we shouldn't mock. Success has instilled a genuine sense of fearlessness in Muse, and their new adventures in sci-fi hi-fi are, for the most part, hugely impressive. Uprising is a brilliantly addictive opener - a Marilyn-Manson-meets-The-Glitter-Band stomper channelling the riff from Billy Idol's White Wedding - with Bellamy wailing, "They will not control us. We will be victorious." Undisclosed desires, bereft of guitar, is a stark gothic take on Timbaland's stripped down R&B template, with staccato string samples layered over Dom Howard's electronic drums, and Bellamy promising, "I want to exorcise the demons from your soul," like Dave Gahan at his most tender. The epic, romantic I Belong To You, drawing inspiration from French composer Camille Saint-Saëns' aria My Heart Opens Itself To Your Voice from the 19th-century opera Samson And Delilah, marries R&B with cocktail jazz piano and climaxes with Bellamy sweetly crooning, "I've travelled half the world to say I belong to you."

  All this but a prelude to the album's extraordinary, elegant climax, Bellamy's three part, 12 minute orchestral work Exogenesis: Symphony. Grandiose yet genuinely affecting, it's a masterpiece, rising and falling dramatically as its protagonists come to the realisation that their time on Earth must, if not necessarily, come to and end and they need to "breach the outer sphere, the edge of all (our) fears." It's ludicrous, outrageous and pretentious: what's not to love?

  Since 9/11 the entertainment industry has offered succour for troubled times with repackaged musical trends, resurrected movie franchises and endless nostalgia. The Resistance stands in direct opposition to such cosiness, and for this Muse should be celebrated. Too few bands have this level of ambition, this desire to explore new territory. And for all the album's dark prophesies, it's perversely life-affirming stuff. Just don't bet on Matt Bellamy sleeping any easier at night. 

(Paul Brannigan).