absolution

I have had Muse's monumental (ho ho) CD in my car for at least a month now and I never tire of hearing any of it. Sonically expansive and frighteningly huge in scope, they have been compared to, in no real order, Queen, The Darkness, and Radiohead; the former two for their 'bombast' and pomp-rock attributes, the latter for the ecstatic/wailing vocals used. I'm getting a little tired, frankly, of people who think 'bombast' is a bad thing. But then again I don't suppose they were one of the 450,000 people at Queen's Rio de Janeiro gig, way back when. My point is, Queen proved that there's a huge, huge market for entertaining, OTT rock, and Muse have merely taken this aspect into the 21st century. As for The Darkness, well you tell me which band is stuck in the 80s? And finally Radiohead, ah, Radiohead. 3 crucial differences between Muse and the boys from Oxford.

1. Muse produce an audio palette that is at least as wide-ranging in scope as Radiohead, if not more so, and have 3 band members instead of 5.
2. Muse definitely have a 'sound', even if it is a sound that some don't like. Radiohead dabble in so many genres that it would be like doing the Times crossword when drunk to pin down what their 'sound' is.
3. Most importantly of all, Muse don't make me want to slit my throat with a bread knife every time I hear them!

So there you have it, this is the future of rock. Also, it's not all glory for Muse - the piano work of Matt Bellamy gets over-rated some of the time. People think that technically he is a 'genius' and 'has skills that a performance major would blush over' but to be honest all he's really playing is arpeggios on a synth. Listen to any keyboard-intro-based track, e.g. New Born, Bliss, Space Dementia, Stockholm Syndrome, etc. The only real moment in Absolution when he gets to digress from this sort of filler material, albeit hugely entertaining filler material, is on 'Butterflies and Hurricanes', where he's plonking down chords so violent that it sounds as though he's trying to dig to Australia. Again, these violent chords aren't terribly difficult to execute as they are basically 3 long bars of G minor and A major chords, with the odd diminished 7th thrown in for good measure, before Matt's vocals come back at 4:01 in D minor. My argument is that Matt is a good keyboardist, then, just not a brilliant one.

End of review, lol.

Today I am going food shopping (joy) then starting some sketches for my major in Composition next year, which is my last in Leeds. How time flies... oh well.