Muse‘s new album gets straight to the effin’ point. Allow me to do the same: the first four tracks are the four best tracks on the album. Am I the only one who didn’t really get into the Muse craze before?
For whatever reason, Absolution and its predecessors just didn’t quite do it for me. Despite the excessive Radiohead comparisons, the group’s newest release, Black Holes and Revelations just reached out and goosed me; and as I turned to smugly slap it in the face for such inappropriate behavior, I found that I was immediately ensconced.
Upon listening, I hear Queen, I hear Radiohead, I hear Rage Against the Machine. The album’s opening track, “Take a Bow,” is an intensely swirled Shame-On-You and reminiscent of a lullaby you might sing to George Bush, Jr: “Death / You bring death and destruction to all that you touch/ Pay/ You must pay/ You must pay for your crimes against the earth.” The album’s title is ironically appropriate as I continue to find myself getting sucked into the black hole that is Brit Pop, and also finding myself helpless to fight it. This album seems to be lying mostly in the fields of frustration with global politics and painful relationships. Theme One: check!
Perhaps the poppiest of all tracks, “Supermassive Black Hole,” is a streamlined, sexy song about being enveloped in the steam of love, only to find out that the steam is really just a cover-up for a vacuous, bone-crushing black hole: “Oh baby don’t you know I suffer?\ Oh baby can you hear me moan?\ You caught me under false pretenses\ How long before you let me go?” Theme two: check! I am, however, becoming a bit worried for the band as themes of desolation, despair and paranoia are too prevalent to be ignored…lyrics about “destroying demonocracy” and “choosing to hide from the all-seeing eye” can only lead to the conclusion that while I look forward to yet another great album, let’s just hope Matt Bellamy‘s penchant for conspiracy theories hasn’t resulted his own lockdown in a bomb shelter before that happens.
