Muse Piles It On

noah | September 15, 2009 10:00 am

Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Muse’s The Resistance, which comes out in the States today: • “It’s symptomatic of The Resistance as a whole: conceptually impressive but musically all too familiar. And while not their best, it’s decent enough to ensure there’ll be more—even though the truly off-the-wall moments are either rare or misguided, meaning the record feels slightly anonymous. So next time, guys, can you just go nuts?” [Ben Patashnik, NME] • “Video games or comics are probably a closer comparison than most of the music Pitchfork covers, actually. There’s a prevailing idea that there’s something spiritually and emotionally dangerous about grown men and women spending most of their alone-time immersed in improbable fantasies where interpersonal relationships and the traumas of the real world can be dispatched/ignored via magical powers. But do you want to wallow in grey impotence in the face of quotidian bullshit every damn minute of the day? Escape, whether via Matt Bellamy or the Immortal Iron Fist or the fine folks at Nintendo, shouldn’t be an a priori dirty word, at least when used sparingly.” [Jess Harvell, Pitchfork] • “Not all of it is palatable, but there’s something unrepentant in The Resistance‘s insane ambitiousness that demands respect rather than mockery. The day Muse topple irrevocably into self-parody will surely come. But, apparently, not yet.” [Alexis Petridis, The Guardian] • “When they succeed, it’s a blast, and the listener is grateful that the band didn’t settle for too long on a particular sound. However, when they fail, it feels as if Muse is trying to be different just for the sake of it. They seem to stage grand, pompous spectacles for the sake of being ‘that band,’ a smirking tongue-in-cheek ridiculous caricature of the glam-rock space cadets that pulled it off with swagger. And on The Resistance, it’s these failures to focus that ultimately prevent the album from being the fantastic work that it could have been. While Muse knows their main strength lies within their ability to be excessive, one wishes that they would know better when enough of ‘too much’ is enough.” [Fernando Filho, Antiquiet]

Tags: