This is all Miriam's fault.
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| Matt Bellamy partaking in the Eucharist |
Why should I not? Rank the Muse records? Literally why not? Muse has been around for longer than I have existed. They've put out one million and one songs, some good and some bad. Since I've listened to them all, and since I've been asked my opinion on them, here we go again. These are mostly first impressions, which are subject to change later. That said, I will not edit this article as my opinion forms more fully. I'm no coward. Here I stand. I can do no other. Let's begin.
#9 - Will of the People
One second.
When I started looking at all the Muse albums, my first point of comparison is how long it takes for me to be annoyed. I heard that Muse was a popular band, and that they had just released a new album. I wanted to check it out. Curiosity killed the Keri. Will of the People took one second. Yet I pushed through. Almost every song sounds like boomer rock designed to be played in stadiums. Muse are known for their maximalist stage presence, after all. But as a result, the actual instrumentation sounds weak. It's so saccharine and tasteless. The closest thing I can compare it to is Ford Truck Month commercials. I can just hear in my mind a voiceover explaining the newest features of the latest model Ford F-150. Every once in a while, I'll listen to an album that drains me empty. When it ends, I feel a pit in my stomach where my soul used to be and a peaceful coolness in the back of my throat relieved that it's over. ALLTY4. Culture III. Angelic to the Core. The Ed Sheeran Equal Sign album. Will of the People might be the worst of them all, because it's the shortest of them all; it accomplishes the same in an even shorter time frame. Even worse is that it's not even completely irredeemable. Despite the cornball concept, You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween is a good song. I love the organ and the reverb-y drums. Synths go hard too. Even if Halloween is a good track, it stands in a bubble. Will of the People feels like Muse really wanted to make a Halloween album through and through, because this album is a nightmare. Happy Ford Truck Month.
#8 - Drones
One minute.
This may not be the worst Muse album, but it's the most boring one. This album has nothing to say. Will of the People may be offensive in how bland it is, but it takes it to such an extreme that it boggles the mind and becomes a showpiece. Drones, on the other hand, does what it does and nothing else. If Muse were to tread water for an hour, it would sound like this. The guitars? They're fine. Vocals? Mediocre. Lyrics? Mid. Production? Passable. Drones may be far from the most offensive album on the market, but it brings absolutely nothing to the table worth looking at either positively or negatively. In my book, being bland and uninteresting is just as unlistenable as being outwardly bad. I wouldn't waste my time with either one, if I valued the few daylight hours God has so graciously given us. Skip this one. No Shoe0nhead endorsement can make it good.
#7 - Simulation Theory
Seven minutes.
If you want to know the experience of Simulation Theory before you listen to it, piss into an ice cube tray. Once the cubes freeze, pour a couple blocks of frozen piss into a nice glass of cold tap water. At first it may seem refreshing. Sandwiched between Drones and Will of the People, Simulation Theory quenches the deeply-understood thirst for a Muse album that actually tries. But you keep drinking. As your thirst dissipates and the cubes melt, you feel yourself less compelled to drink with every sip. If you are bold enough to push through to the end, you must come to accept that you just drank a glass of frozen piss water. Simulation Theory is just as rancid as Drones and Will of the People are, yet it lies under the guise that this concept album will take the band in a new direction. The first song is the best on the album, giving you something completely new. Every track sounds worse and worse through the entire experience. By the end, you're forced into the realization that, despite your high hopes, this album sucks too.
#6 - The 2nd Law
One minute.
The title of this album is designed to blue ball the listener. It is not about the Biblical book of Deuteronomy. (The Greek "ὀ dεύτερος νόμος" means "second law.") It isn't a complete waste of your time, however. The 2nd Law stands at a weird place in the middle of Muse's catalog. It doesn't succumb much to the strengths and weaknesses of the albums on either side of it. There are moments here and there throughout the project where even casual listeners can tell that the band was going for something that might even be a little bit cool. It's not hard to tell that Muse was trying something new. Unfortunately it sort of falls flat. This I blame on the engineers. For whatever reason, despite the massive scope of this album, the engineers must have been hired on Fiverr. The 2nd Law tries to be grandiose and important, but it sounds like how it would feel to write the Declaration of Independence on a wet paper towel with a ball point pen. The most important elements bleed into each other, resulting in a work where the substance is there with none of the clarity it needs for anyone to even care. Muse should have given up on the wet paper towel of an engineering team and just order some good card stock. What a shame. I was really rooting for The 2nd Law. Even if it's not about the Bible, it had a lot of potential. Besides, this is easily the best cover art Muse has ever had. No contest. Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Yuh yuh.
#5 - The Resistance
Two minutes.
If 2009 was the year of shallow dance pop music from Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, and the like, it wouldn't be unfair to conclude that Muse was bandwagoning with The Resistance. Whether the band was self-aware enough to realize it or not, the album comes off as pretending it's deeper than it is. It shouts, "He will not divide us!" Yet it gets confused as to what "He," "us," or "divide" actually mean. The Resistance is based on Orwell's 1984, but exists outside of the cultural paradigm that gives 1984 its meaning. Without that context, Muse doesn't do enough to clarify what government is oppressing whom. Maybe it's just because I have severe tizz, but I have no idea what policy the band is fighting that inspired the album. Decrying MK Ultra is nothing new. I guess Muse really hated the Obama administration? This album also has some cornball moments, such as when Matt Bellamy does his Freddie Mercury impression, or when he sings, "You are my muse." Oh brother. Despite all its issues, there are some invigorating moments on The Resistance. I'd say there's more good than bad here. The album sounds better than The 2nd Law from a technical standpoint, and the whole back quarter of the record, with the symphony orchestra, sounds really clean. It has a great sense of build and payoff. Even though I complain about The Resistance, I can't complain too much. If I do, Obama will throw me in Room 101. It's an album worth checking out.
#4 - Black Holes and Revelations
Twenty minutes.
Look at these four guys. Left to right. Jesse, Tuco, Walt, and Hank. Besides the point, Black Holes and Revelations is a good record. Quite good, actually. Sure, there are a few moments here I don't love. The Freddie Mercury voice, for example, is back. Even then, I understand why people like this album. There are a lot of catchy tracks here that run together into such a coherent project. Up and down, ebb and flow. It's like life. In the process of listening through the Muse records, I asked my buddy Anna Grass what she knew of Muse. The answer was almost nothing, but she liked a few songs here. Frankly, I can't be upset. If you're going to pick a Muse album that's good for entry-level listeners looking to get into Muse, this is a great cross-section of their skills. The sounds of this album are absolutely timeless. It's catchy, it's well-made, and it holds up really well when it's all over. You can cater your listen through their catalog based on what you did or didn't like on Black Holes. If nothing else, it serves that purpose. Muse could have ended here and nobody would be mad. Black Holes and Revelations is a more than satisfactory album.
#3 - Origin of Symmetry
Never.
It's 2001. You're a high school student, and Knutson just gave you a C on an English paper that you worked really hard on. Sometimes your teacher's personal opinion on a heated topic trumps any rubric she may have to evaluate the thorough detail and effort you put into your work. But it's okay. You drop into Barnes and Noble on the way home, hoping your rusty Lincoln from the 80s doesn't drop the transmission in the mall parking lot, and you pick up a new album from just a few weeks ago that's causing a lot of buzz. You nervously hand the cashier your crumpled tenner you earned making minimum wage at Dairy Queen, hoping she doesn't wonder why you're buying such a bizarre looking CD. You put your new CD in the passenger seat, trying to resist the urge to unwrap it and look through the booklet before you get home. But when you finally get there, it's worth it. You tear open the plastic wrap, pop the disk in your Sega Dreamcast, and you listen. And it's great. It blows your mind. "This is going to change music forever," you think to yourself. Little did you know that you were right. This album is The Strokes' Is This It.
It's easy to understate what Is This It did for rock music in the early 2000s. The 90s were over. Gone were the days where frankly bizarre bands like The Flaming Lips, Butthole Surfers, Chumbawamba, and Harvey Danger can defy the odds and taste mainstream recognition for but a moment before fading back into the underground forever. The mainstream was now trending toward the type of clean modern pop that Max Martin was producing for Britney Spears' first few albums. The more experimentally-inclined listeners fled to hip hop, where Eminem, Deltron 3030, and MF DOOM were putting out conscious but tight concept albums that might have casual listeners (and your parents) running in the other direction. With glitzy pop and real hip hop on the rise, rock was left with a void. For a time, that void was "filled" with bands like Creed, Lifehouse, Staind, Puddle of Mudd, and Crazy Town -- bands nobody likes nor cares about today. With such a mid lineup, rock was completely unsustainable in the direction it was going. The Strokes corrected course. Is This It called back to the basics of classic rock while taking it in a new, more modernist direction. The floodgates were now open for other bands that missed the 90s to find success in a more raw, garage band type sound just as Nirvana had done with Nevermind ten years prior. Modest Mouse got big. The White Stripes got big. The Killers scrambled to redo their album from almost the beginning in order to compete. Franz Ferdinand, Jimmy Eat World, and My Chemical Romance got played on the radio. Caught up in that mix was Muse's record Origin of Symmetry.
Origin of Symmetry is not influenced by Is This It. In fact, it predates It by over a month. Yet, understanding the culture that made Is This It such a big success, it's not hard to see where Origin of Symmetry shines bright. It's big and self-important, with the musical chops to show for it. Instrumentation is heavy and grimy in a way that makes it seem personable and relatable, but never low-budget. The way Matt Bellamy's vocals are layered into all instruments hits a sweet spot that other producers would live and die trying to find. Yet Origin of Symmetry and Is This It are not mere clones of each other, with preference of one over the other being arbitrary. Origin of Symmetry sacrifices a little bit of its consistency in sound for the freedom to be more artsy and diverse. This sacrifice comes with big payoffs. Origin of Symmetry flies through your mind that makes you wonder where the time has gone when it's over. This album is 55 minutes long, but feels like 40. The runtime isn't the only thing that is more densely packed than it feels. The layers here make Origin of Symmetry incredibly rewarding to go back to for multiple listens. It's such a good album. This is where Muse gets good.
#2 - Showbiz
Never.
The 90s were a different time. Looking at Showbiz after paying close attention to Origin of Symmetry is such a gargantuan task. These albums are so similar, yet exist in entirely different worlds. They reflect the environment they come from.
First, let's look at Showbiz by itself. Showbiz is an album that flows like a flume. It starts at full speed, slows down, speeds up, and slows down again. All 90s albums do it, from Nevermind to Baby One More Time. Taking into account how it flows, the defining question to validate the Showbiz experience is, how well does this flow come together as a coherent and satisfying tracklist? To answer my own question, Showbiz flows really well. Sure, not every song knocks it out of the park. There are some of the slower songs where it does sound like Matt's voice is strained and it isn't pretty. You can tell that this is definitely their first album. Muse is still working on their sea legs and discovering who they want to be as a band. But as a coherent tracklist that flows into a full body of work, this is their best work. The slow tracks blend well with the fast tracks. Every song stands on its own as an individual piece. Yet, as the album develops, it feels like one giant song. Compare it to St. Anger. There may be a Purify or a Shoot Me Again in the Showbiz tracklist - songs that, while good, don't meet the caliber and quality of the vast majority. They still serve a purpose in forming the identity of the project and giving a fuller understanding of the creative outlook behind it all. It's best that all these tracks stay together.
Looking at Showbiz in comparison to Origin of Symmetry, Showbiz is definitely older. Origin of Symmetry may be a staple of its time, but it distinguishes itself from 2001 more than Showbiz distinguishes itself from 1999. It may seem like this is a knock against Showbiz; hear me out. ****. The 90s guitar fuzz is one thing most charming about Showbiz. Softening the album, either due to intentional engineering or due to hardware limitations of the recording equipment, gives many 90s rock albums a type of warm feeling that more modern production doesn't lend itself to very often. When the instruments sound closer together, the experience of listening to the album feels as if it's closer to you. This is not to be confused with the "blending together" that the instruments on The 2nd Law exhibit. The 2nd Law blends the instruments together to the detriment of all of them. Showbiz lets them all stand together in a way where they build each other up and reinforce each other - not hinder each other. The 2nd Law ends up sounding dry and unfinished, while Showbiz sounds intentional and homegrown. The albums of the 2000s are written and produced with the intention of being personal and personable. 90s albums may not feel that way nearly as much, but they have a remnant of that by pure happenstance. There is an argument that there is far more charm in what is by happenstance than in what is intentional. The long story short is that Showbiz has a charm to it that no other album has replicated. It is definitely worth the listen.
#1 - Absolution
Never. Never ever.
I'm not afraid to address the elephant in the room. This cover art is horrendous. Charles stood in the Tesco parking lot looking up at the sky toward all the Spider-Man birthday balloons his son just released over British airspace. He wishes he hadn't just poured fifty quid down the drain. It looks like poo poo doody on a stick. I actually don't have much to profoundly say about Absolution. This album is solid and catchy through and through. Take what worked with Origin of Symmetry and do it better. The songs are richer by a wide margin. The riffs and hooks are catchier. The vocals sound cleaner. The flow as a tracklist is so incredibly consistent. Never is there a sudden drop in quality or a lack of attention to detail. That being said, you can still feel the ebbs and flows of how a good album ebbs and flows. If it weren't, how boring would that be? Apocalypse Please is clearly a good energetic start to the album. Fury is undeniably written with the conclusion to the album in mind. I think the real standout here is Thoughts of a Dying Atheist. It may be a catchy rock song from the 2000s, but it shows an honesty which other bands would be afraid to acknowledge. Death is a scary concept. It's not natural to die, but it is natural to know what the standard of goodness is as it sits before us - and how much we fail to achieve it. If God is real, he must be good; meanwhile, we are not. What is the natural conclusion of this line of reasoning? The year prior, Bad Religion answered the question with, "Who cares? God is dumb." (This is quite an unfortunate conclusion to reach, since The Process of Belief is otherwise one of the best produced albums I've ever heard. What a shame.) Muse answers this question with a brutal, "I have literally no idea. And it scares me. What is scarier between something I could now know but don't, and something I can never know?" They don't give an answer because it means something else to succumb to defeat instead of speculate endlessly. To admit this weakness is what I really admire. To put weakness on display here makes Absolution far more human than I expected going in. There are a lot of other good tracks here. This album is worth listening to once or twice. Absolution has all the good which Will of the People lacks, and it lacks all the bad which Will of the People relishes itself in. What a project it is.
Muse is not my favorite band by a wide margin. As soon as I hit publish, I'm probably going back to listening to La Dispute and other emo nonsense like I always do. Even so, this was an exciting experience. Once I got to the last three albums (which are actually the first three albums in chronological order), I was excited to finish up the Muse catalog. Will of the People may be so bad that Miriam had to persuade with me to check out the other stuff. But am I ever glad I did. Love it or not, Muse has an interesting discography that has made its mark on me and many other people. There's a reason Muse is still popular today. Now I'm on to ranking all the Poppy albums. I'll see y'all again in a few months when I finish writing a few short paragraphs about the four (or five) that exist. Happy Ford Truck Month.
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| Mfw I'm on the cover of Showbiz |
If you would like to purchase any of these albums, here are the links.
Will of the PeopleSimulation Theory
The 2nd Law
The Resistance
Black Holes and Revelations
Origin of Symmetry
Showbiz
Absolution
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