Share your controversial Muse opinions II - More Radiohead talk

[serpentsatellite]

Matt openly admitted they were going backwards. I'd been really concerned about it since that very first interview about it in that German magazine when he said he "tried to get into the mindset of CE and OoS."

I remember not being 100% convinced the interview was real because it was such a blatant fanserve thing to say, and exactly what all those "old Muse" fans had been waiting for.

Of course the album was going to disappoint based on that, no matter what it sounded like.

[TheHappySpaceman]

So I'm not sure how many people here share this opinion, but there has never been a Muse album that is wholly or even mostly bad.

 

You can't 'fixed' someone and then say Ruled By Secrecy is a ballad in the same post.

 

There are rules to these things.

 

Yeah, I was kind of stretching it to figure out what the ballad on Absolution would be. (I forgot about Falling Away with You, though I suppose Endlessly might also count--either it's a ballad or it's a prediction of the RickRoll.)

 

No you're not overthinking it, probably the opposite.

 

FAWY, Invincible, Guiding Light and Explorers.

 

Ah, I forgot about Falling Away. Never thought of Invincible as a ballad, though that may just be me. I knew about Guiding Light and Explorers, though. But the question is, why are ballads inherently a bad thing? You guys seem to like Unintended and Blackout just fine.

 

...Well, at least when Matt is playing guitar on them. Otherwise, what's the point?

 

(No, Matt, I will not let you forget about 2013 that easily.)

[Hat]

Don't think anyone said or implied that ballads are inherently bad. Espectro even specified it to "shitty ballad".

 

But most of us here share the opinion that Matt rarely write any good ballads anymore.

[haze015]

So I'm not sure how many people here share this opinion, but there has never been a Muse album that is wholly or even mostly bad.

 

As a whole, pretty much all of them since BH&R.

 

There are still good songs on all of them, but such a random assortment of music that its difficult to listen to them as a complete piece of work. Feels more like a singles compilation thrown together with zero cohesion beyond Matt's voice. So they've done bad albums, even if the songs themselves haven't been all bad.

OOS I could stick on and easily listen to all the way through, even if I just wanted to hear one track (Absolution pushes it about as far as is possible, so not sure it entirely works). BH&R and later, literally no desire to put them on and listen all the way through.

[Hat]

The only way I listen to BH&R, TR, T2L or Drones is either through individual songs, or in playlists where I've grouped songs of similar genres together.

[Jobby]

I feel like Showbiz->Absolution was a perfect album sequence where every album developed certain aspects of the last one and brought something fresh to the table.

 

100%

 

I do wish there'd been just one more album between Origin and Abso where they'd gone all out with that hyper, unhinged, bubblegum-metal circus vibe of '01/'02 before tightening things up though

[FabriPav]

bubblegum-metal circus vibe

 

[forevermusic]

I feel like Showbiz->Absolution was a perfect album sequence where every album developed certain aspects of the last one and brought something fresh to the table. Then it seemed like they went "okay what do we do now? Let's try everything" and they made an album simply trying out different things. That's when it should have ended. That's where they should have gone "Okay lets go in this direction". Instead they make two MORE albums just experimenting, but never actually moving forward.

 

Sorry, I've said this almost as many times as Clunge has mentioned 2004.

Yeah that's more or less the biography - Origin developed the band by building on some of the sounds from Showbiz, and Absolution went for a sound that built on Origin.

 

There's probably a few people who would've said that if LP4 had been merely in that vein they'd gone stale, and even then, most of Black Holes worked in spite of its experimentalism. But continuing with a sonic smorgasboard for Resistance and 2nd Law created a more uneven field. There's an interview somewhere from Matt saying the idea for what became The Resistance was an album that used all of their ideas for experiments, and it wound up feeling a bit dense with all of them.

 

I would say T2L is probably a more focused album than Resistance, but its still wildly all over the place sonically. Maybe LP8 might bring some back. Or not.

[Hat]

I know you're mostly pointing out how strange that sounds but I totally get what he means and I think the Vuilstamen Riff is a good example of it.

[FabriPav]

It's mostly the "bubblegum"

[Jobby]

I'M NOT A GENRE BUFF

 

I try my best

[Zepp]

Hullabaloo has a bit of that but yeah, I agree with all you guys have said. And they were really close to continuing that perfect sequence with BH&R, it only took a few bad decisions.

[FabriPav]

a few bad decisions.

 

Well, at least their bank accounts disagree.

[TheHappySpaceman]

The worst thing to come out of post-Absolution Muse was Matt's decision to stop playing the guitar or piano on certain songs (e.g. Unintended, Blackout, Starlight, half of Uprising, Undisclosed Desires, Follow Me).

 

Also, as for the whole "Muse sucked after Black Holes and Revelations" discussion, well, I only got into Muse via The Resistance, so I may be a little biased when talking about their later output.

[tinhkt5491]

For me the music of Muse was very interesting.

[Zepp]

What most of us are saying isn't that Muse outright sucked after BH&R. It's more about them not having a strong direction and falsely trying to reinvent themselves by trying a bit of everything as one-shots instead of digging deeper on other aspects of their music (typically T2L). There are still songs that I like, but it feels different. When I think of T2L, I rate it as perhaps their worst album; but when I think about the individual songs on the album, I really like most of them (Madness, PS, Survival, FM, Animals, Uns, IS and possibly Supremacy). Still, as an album I find it to hard to listen to, even the good songs. That's entertaining, but Muse gave me so much more than entertainment that I can't settle for that and be happy with it.

 

That being said, I believe that TR was a logical and flowing continuation from BH&R, it's just that BH&R took a small turn that wasn't EXACTLY what most of us would've liked best, but if you accept BH&R as it is, then TR isn't out of place imo. And that's one of the reasons why I'm more indulgent towards TR than T2L or Drones. TR might not be my favourite album (though it does have songs that I love), but I'm okay with that because I feel I understand where they were going and I can see its logic. It is legitimate in Muse's discography, unlike T2L.

[TheHappySpaceman]

I was more accepting of The 2nd Law because I feel like every band has to have their wildly experimental album, such as Queen with Hot Space and Van Halen with Van Halen III, and most of the time, these albums do get some kind of backlash. Nevertheless, Follow Me is still not one of my favorites.

[Jobby]

I'm reluctant to call T2L 'experimenting' tbh. To me, that makes it sound like they actually had some kind of purpose and weren't just fucking around/throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.

 

I think BH&R was the last time they really experimented imo, other than UD on TR.

[Hat]

When bands have their "wildly experimental album" it's usually about trying to do something new though, not just trying to imitate genres of the 70s and 80s.

[FabriPav]

I was more accepting of The 2nd Law because I feel like every band has to have their wildly experimental album, such as Queen with Hot Space and Van Halen with Van Halen III, and most of the time, these albums do get some kind of backlash. Nevertheless, Follow Me is still not one of my favorites.

 

What of The 2nd Law makes you think it's wildly experimental?

[haze015]

He did describe Radiohead as "weird electronic stuff" a few pages back.

[TheHappySpaceman]

Sorry I was unable to respond. I was at a friend's wedding yesterday. Anyway, to answer your question: The album experiments with a lot of different genres of music and other elements within the different songs. Basically, I see it as Muse trying new things to see what sticks, such as electronic-driven pop with Madness, symphonic James Bond-esque rock (not sure if there's a better way to describe it) with Supremacy, funk rock with Panic Station, dubstep with Follow Me and maybe Unsustainable (though that was driven with guitars unlike most dubstep), uncommon time signatures with Animals (that one in particular was in 5/4), full choirs in Survival, and letting Matt not sing lead (the last four songs, most particularly in Save Me and Liquid State).

 

He did describe Radiohead as "weird electronic stuff" a few pages back.

 

Considering that I am still here on the site, I would greatly prefer you to address me directly if you have any complaints instead of mocking me as if I weren't here to notice it.

[haze015]

Here's a particularly famous piece of experimental electronic music from 1958 and its accompanying score that was made in the 70's (A fantastic bit of art all by itself):

 

So when you describe anything as 'wildly experimental', you've got to be referring to trying new unexplored ideas that don't sound like what's gone before and/or done without the likelihood of a 'good', 'listenable' result. Not a band trying their hand at different genres outside of what they've previously been pigeonholed into.

These days, things like auto-generative music (Brian Eno's latest is an example) would be one area of experimental music.

[FabriPav]

Writing a 5/4 song is soooo experimental

[Jobby]

Sorry I was unable to respond. I was at a friend's wedding yesterday. Anyway, to answer your question: The album experiments with a lot of different genres of music and other elements within the different songs. Basically, I see it as Muse trying new things to see what sticks, such as electronic-driven pop with Madness, symphonic James Bond-esque rock (not sure if there's a better way to describe it) with Supremacy, funk rock with Panic Station, dubstep with Follow Me and maybe Unsustainable (though that was driven with guitars unlike most dubstep), uncommon time signatures with Animals (that one in particular was in 5/4), full choirs in Survival, and letting Matt not sing lead (the last four songs, most particularly in Save Me and Liquid State).

 

Again though, I wouldn't call any of that 'experimenting'. It's just aping already established sounds/hopping from genre-to-genre and, even then, it's not like they'd never done things like instrumental tracks, electronically-driven pop, symphonic rock or messing about with time signatures before.

 

This discussion is doing a really effective job of reminding why I absolutely despise T2L Almost everything about it just screams "we've run out of legitimate ideas" to me. Not that Drones does a whole lot better in that regard, even if I actually like it on the whole.