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Sam and I went to the Muse concert at Climate Pledge on Tuesday night and if you say, didn’t you guys just go to shows there a couple nights ago, you would be right. There are a lot of bands touring at the moment. I’m guessing it’s due to Covid and for a couple of years there was nothing and now everyone is getting out at the same time. There are a couple of weeks here where we have a concert almost every night, which I admit is a bit crazy. Good thing I’m retired!
Who is Muse? Well, I think of them as a cross between the theatrics of Queen and the musician-ship and theme-based concept albums of Rush. It’s over the top loud, bombastic music interspersed with orchestral interludes and you either like it or you don’t. Subtle, they are not. Muse is huge in Europe, where they’re from, and even though they’re less popular in the States, they can still come close to selling out large venues such as Climate Pledge and really everything about their music and live shows are perfect fits for arenas.
Muse has released nine studio albums since 1999 but for the most part they all have a similar theme. The vast majority of Muse’s catalog deals with what Matt Bellamy and the boys view as the evil empire taking control of our lives and bowing us to the will of authority. It’s about oppression, brainwashing and mind control by those in charge and the struggle to overthrow that regime. Sam pointed out that whoever that is, is purposely ambiguous. They never call out any one entity. Are the oppressors Republican? Democrats? They’re from the UK, maybe it’s the British government. It could be giant corporations. You decide. The story has been the same for over 20 years so it could be all of the above.
If Phish had an over the top light show a couple of nights earlier, it paled in comparison to Muse. Muse took the light show and cranked the dial to eleven. Lights, cannons shooting streamers and confetti, fire, huge set pieces that changed over the course of the show, Matt wearing a mask while playing a keyboard built into the sleeve of a jacket with lights that pulsated to the beat, or a guitar with some sort of synthesizer pad built into it. It’s a bit hard to explain. This little snippet gives a bit of an idea. It’s mind blowing how creativity and technology come together to make such a huge spectacle.
The whole show told a story with video clips interspersed between the songs and set piece changes telling the main story and then the songs filling that in. As you would expect from what I’ve described of Muse, the story is of an oppressed dystopian society where one anonymous mask-wearing man braves the regime, portrayed by sort of demon-like figures. The man is struck down but then another takes up the fight and by the end there is an uprising of the masses to overthrow the evil empire.
I saw Muse back in 2015 and effectively the shows told the same story but technology has come a long way just in the past eight years. To be honest this was standard Muse fair but fantastically created, in some ways almost a musical as much as a concert. A really, really loud musical.
