Muse - London Brixton Academy - 30/5/01
5/5
By: Toby L
Sheesh. Three members. One racket. A heaving mass of ecstatic, sweaty and obsessed fans... Just yet another night's work for Muse, you guess.
As multiple roadies swan on and off the stage for a full half-hour - prompting many calls from the crowd who mistake them for members of the soon-advancing Muse - the anticipation is somewhat noticeable amongst over 4,000 attendees this evening. The stage set - consisting of, like, three huuuuuge domed balloons, located above the spots where the upcoming band would soon take their places - certainly raises eyebrows, but once the Devon threesome trot onstage and the lights go down, their use for this evening is verified; hologramic, projected images are shone on to their rubber surfaces, delivering them the texture of distant planets, and f**k us if space isn't the place where we're all transported tonight with Bellamy and co's performance.
This, the last night of their tour, certainly calls for an extra special performance and the band in front strives to impress. A crawling mass of feedback introducing second song of the evening, 'Uno', is a prior explosion to an ignited mosh-pit of manic measures, bouncing with every bellow of lead singer Matt's wails... 'You could have been number one... But you threw it away...' Ouch. Emotive stuff. The response is vast and over-powering. Suiting the Museic just fine then.
Yet, frontman aside, and the band's distinctly stand-alone harnessing of sound is helped by the vital part to play that Chris' bass deals with - chunky, distorted swaths of reverberating roundness, to inversely parallel the screeching six-strings. Pretentious it may be, his reward onstage is a blast of his own wind-fan. That said, even Dom on drums is provided with his own unique arrangement for the stage-show - in the form of scattered lights coating his drums, allowing each smack of the pads to be complimented by ultra-quick flashes of varying, vibrant flickers of colour. Matt is granted the short straw - candles behind his keyboard.
This is really true: Bellamy's voice, despite name-checks to Buckley and Thom Yorke, is unique and harrowing, operatic and beautiful. He outdoes this by then playing extremely wonderful guitar solos and hooks whilst spinning around at the rate of a drunken teenager at a wedding and then bashes out notes and chords on the electronic piano which nod towards his fondness in classical music's stylings. The point being - don't underestimate this band; you can do if you like, but it will only be at your peril.
Musically, it's expectedly a greatest-hits affair, but, despite that, it's pleasurable to see new tracks such as 'Newborn' receiving a reaction fit for kings of this sort of thing (let alone an act yet to release a second LP), aided at the start by Bellamy's inspired decision to knock over half of his Marshall amp-stack. Little is said (if anything) as they crack into the eerie and storming 'Cave' and slumber during a genuinely moving 'Unintended', where Chris' bass is swapped for an acoustic guitar and a stool to sit on.
The double-whammy of 'Plug In Baby' and 'Muscle Museum' prior to the set-closer creates unfavourable scenes of people going berserk, whilst the punked-up, 'Crystal Lake'-alike 'Bliss' reveals that Muse's new material is more accomplished, risky in variation and ultimately stronger than their debut effort. As foamy bubbles explode out of either side of the stage and from above on to the crowd below, a siege of balloons and rubber balls descend down from the ceiling and it's like another world. True to reputation, the instruments are trashed and the band walk off leaving an audience that is too satisfied to call for encores. Muse deserve to be one of the biggest bands in the world. That's it. Quite simply.
Photo-Credit: Andrew Future
Artists in this article: Muse
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