Muse are one of the best advertisements in the world for silliness. When the Devon trio came along in the late Nineties, they found a niche for people who wished Radiohead had kept writing big rock songs instead of tinkering with avant electronics – but they really found their feet with 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations when they started cutting loose with glam rock stomp, laser-zapping electronics, huge choruses and wild sci-fi imagery. Ever since, they’ve always been at their best when they drop any earnestness (not always possible, given singer Matt Bellamy’s penchant for doomy conspiracy thinking), turn the colour saturation up to maximum and get silly. And, even by their own preposterous standards, that’s what they’ve done here.
“The Dark Forest” alone manages to fit in The Pet Shop Boys, Iron Maiden, Carl Orff type massed choirs chanting the names of deities and demons and a few kitchen sinks to boot. It’s an absolutely classic Muse banger, but lifted further by lavish – and beautifully written – string parts swooping all over the shop. “Nightshift” continues the strings, but it’s in disco mode, over a why-did-nobody-think-of-this-before fusion of Daft Punk and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. We’re back to high drama Muse-rock for a bit after that, but then comes the centrepiece “Be With You” which completely blows the hinges off.
Starting with a church organ, it builds up from sweet and simple ballad through an intensifying dance music kickdrum, and into a breakdown – then just when you think it’s going to go full Coldplay/Avicii wo-oah wo-oah stadium DM chantalong, it explodes into the most wonderful, sincere Eighties soft rock climax to end all wonderful, sincere Eighties soft rock climaxes. Like "Nightshift", from pretty much any other musicians it would be horrible, but it's not. It’s the secular love song as hymn that both Bono and Chris Martin have been trying to write their entire lives long, it makes the simplest personal affirmation into a supernova, and it deserves to be a giga-hit and fixture on classics radio for the next century.
They’re not even done with the populist audacity there, either. On penultimate track “Hush”, Matt Bellamy duets with a female vocal, somehow fitting a high-drama pop song not dissimilar to SIA in her “Titanium” / “Chandelier” imperial phase into a prog metal framework. And best of all, no matter how much they amp up the glitter, or the dance beats, or the disco strings, or the emoting, it still feels like them. In fact the explosive pop and joyous affirmative vibes seem like the only natural way they could avoid settling into predictability. Sometimes preposterous times call for preposterous music, and Muse have just made the ideal album for cranking up as you turn to face the chaos with an unhinged grin on your face.
Listen to "Nightshift":
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