(MUSE) Albums: Hullabaloo Soundtrack

NME
29th June 2002

TWO-DISC B-SIDES AND LIVE ALBUM FROM DEVON'S FINEST, NEVER KNOWINGLY UNDER-PLAYED

In times of drought, it's a recurrent plea: where are the Bowies, the showmen, the shamen? At a moment when the Stereophonics were considered a perfectly acceptable way for young men to behave, Muse filled the glamour gap with silliness to spare. They wrote songs of titanic ambition, made ridiculous pronouncements about spacemen and sex and displayed a fondness for capering about onstage in a flurry of petals and silks.
  ‘Hullabaloo’ is a suitably opulent document of their success to date - a double-CD of B-sides and a live set recorded in Paris last year — and it's a testament to Muse's lordly, “roll-up-roll-up!” desire for attention.
  Yet their idea of grandeur is one huge delusion: compare these hysterics with the cosmic humanity of The Flaming Lips or Spiritualized and Мuse's flaws are obvious. Despite Matt Bellamy’s reputation as a strange young man, there’s not a moment of sensitivity, not a moment of convincing emotion.
  For all their unlikeability, there's something undeniably impressive going on here. The B-sides are diverting enough - in particular 'Nature 1”, which swallows Led Zeppelin like a sequinned boa constrictor. It's the live record, though, that shows enjoyment doesn't have to be a moral issue (nor one of taste). Fuelled by Bellamy's overwrought shrieking, they dip into Moulin Rouge ridiculousness in front of a fittingly excitable French audience. If these songs had moustaches, they'd be twirling them, indulging in the Hooded Claw idea of mystery and theatricality that pervades 'Micro Cuts’ or ‘Space Dementia'. There aren't many bands who can induce helpless “what was that!” hilarity and for that alone, Muse, olympians of ludicrousness, should be watched with interest. 
They're entertainers, no less. 
They're certainly no more. 

(Victoria Segal)

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