If there's any award for best live act in the Europe, it tends to go to Muse by default - almost to the point where it should be retired, like women's hockey at the Olympic level (POW!). Their shows are large, bombastic, full of video and lasers and a commercially acceptable form of prog rock (they're prog in the same way that The National are No Depression. It's there, but not.). I'd seen them once before in Toronto at quite possibly the worst venue in the area - Avro Hall, which is basically an airplane hangar changed into a convention centre. Their music, their video screens, their light show was too big for the venue, and it was like being stuck in the elevator with Baz Lurhman who had some VERY IMPORTANT THINGS to tell you about King Crimson.
So when I heard they were playing the Air Canada Centre I figured it was the closest I was going to come to seeing them at Wembley (on the bucket list also). I was actually happy to see that my seat was at the far end of the arena, meaning I was going to get to at least see everything at an appropriate scale.
The stage was comprised of three pillars that various movies and effects were shown on during the show. For the overture (oh, I feels so fancy!) before the set they were bleak towers that looked almost like the cover of Original Pirate Material until they changed to silhouettes of drones walking up an internal staircase. After a minute they started falling down like dominoes, with one doing a full on, well, falling man. This hit on a frequent theme in the show and Muse's lyrics: The modern world is of forced conformity and mind control and fear and terror and aliens and stars and...you know...like....stuff.
The screens fell to show the band members, each on one of the pillars about 10 or so feet in the air. So what you had was a triptych of these performers isolated from each other, above the crowd, and almost in a straight line centered around a large drum kit on a rotating platform. I was pondering the meaning of this and kept coming up against another important theme of threes in music and literature, and I fully admit that I didn't put my finger on it until about the third number when the band descended to stage level: Emmerson, Lake, and Palmer.
It's apt. Muse sprung fully formed from the heads of ELP after a saucy union with Queen. It's loud, it's large, it has overarching themes of science fiction, paranoia and...I dunno...there's probably a Tarkus somewhere in "Knights of Cydonia". Although they are embraced by Twi-heads due to shout outs from Stephanie Meyers (check out them crazy Google hits, daddy-o!), their music is really more appropriate for some teenager's dream movie based on a mis-reading (or non-reading) of Nineteen Eighty Four.
That's not to say that they don't have a sense of humour or flat out musical skill. Many of the periods between songs featured little jam sessions, and even a brief ho-down. And their reputation as a live act is well deserved - they actually are very good musicians and you can tell they take pride in what they do (or maybe I just continue to be a sucker for bass players who play more with their fingers than a plectrum, Peter Hook being the exception. Oh, and Tony Levin, though when you spend a good part of time inventing instruments I'm not too sure how to chart you). And Matt Bellamy's tales of mind control and resistance and rebellion and ...you know....robots 'n' stuff...are sung in a voice that seems to go from Geddy Lee on 2112 to Phil Collins on Duke (shut up, it's a good album!)
The stage show itself, the reason one goes to see Muse is an arena setting, is worth the trip...kinda sorta well it depends. There's no doubt that the three pillars (which, by the way, the band would be re-risen on from time to time) were impressive and gave it a sense of spectacle. The videos shown during the songs rotated between band and crowd shots, as well as films that reinforced the themes of the songs to an impressive effect. The opening montage of people falling down a stairwell was kind of chilling, as well as a film chronicling the formation of the "United States of Eurasia". A simulated man being drowned during "Time is Running Out" actually made me feel a little guilty for enjoying the song, as did frequent data streams and simulated ID cards/CCTV screens.
Which brings up a fundamental disconnect that comes out during a Muse show. Matt Bellamy's lyrics can range for the pastoral to the epic, but often fall in the paranoid. There's a better than average chance that he's never met a conspiracy theory that didn't appeal to him on some level. So here you have these amazing set, all this great and impressive technology for songs about... well...how technology is going to enslave us...or save us...it's not clear sometimes, and I think it's both - it's going to ensave us I suppose. As well you have a lot of these paranoid images about mind control and surveillance, but then you also have huge beachballs designed like eyeballs falling on to the crowd to be knocked around.
But I'll tell ya - the kids, they like it. The floor was jumping and dancing the entire time, and the person behind me was dancing so hard to "Knights of Cydonia" that I actually thought someone had burst through the wall to the outside. So, you can't say they don't know their fans and give them what they want.
As the show ended and we filed out, I was thinking about Bellamy - he's young, he's a bit of a prodigy and obviously reads a lot, but it must be exhausting being him. Maybe that's why the show is so big, so bombastic, so full of energy. If he were left to his thoughts for too long without an outlet he'd certainly slip into David Icke territory in about a week and half.
Yes, I'm a bit of a prog fan, and yes I do like Muse. I'm glad I went to the show because it is an experience that just not many bands do right now. But I'm also glad that there's a strike through that item on my list now. It's a spectacle, but on some levels it's a little empty because of all the inherent and necessary contradictions contained within. I've said before that bands like Interpol and Pearl Jam can put on as engaging a show by just playing and coloring some of the lights, and I'll stand by it. I go back to it every time because it feels like that in the end you see a lot more from closer up.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment