So here’s 2006’s best LP, Muse Black Holes & Revelations.
Now, I have no idea without looking what else came out that year, but that’s not relevant anyway; I just love this album. Everyone in my immediate family loves this LP, my mate Kieran at work loves this album.
Umm, and that seems to be it. I remain perplexed, puzzled, perma-mystified as to why Muse don’t get more love than they do. They are a great stadium-enabled, instrumentally acute, blazingly heavy, clever cloggingsly, ambitious rock group with great songs. Okay so their last LP was a bit whack but we’ll overlook that* and dial it back to when it fits my narrative.
Like all the deepest music fans who pride themselves on spotting talent at an early stage, I got into Muse when they hit big with Black Holes & Revelations**. I remember thinking their earlier stuff was oddly angular, classically influenced, shiny chrome with an odd classical bent to the song structures; I love it all now of course. Mrs 1537 bought the CD for the car and I just flipped for it immediately.
This was music written on and for a vast canvass, loud tunes that swaggered and believed in their own importance, performed as though it was a challenge before the whole human race that Muse were not going to lose. It was also surprisingly slinky in places too, things had woken up downstairs in Museland.
Opener ‘Take A Bow’ features an increasingly hysterical keyboard riff, launching us straight into a maelstrom of paranoia, doom and pessimism; unremitting hell, corruption and death is just what you want from your shiny new LP. Then about half way through Matt Bellamy’s guitar seemingly emerges from a cocoon and the song becomes a stately overclocked lament. It is all rather odd.
‘Starlight’ is exactly what Muse do so well, a steady thrum anchors Bellamy’s skyscraping vocals and sci-fi silliness firmly to terra firma. This is as close as they got to U2 but they pull it off rather spectacularly here by virtue of an undeniable tune.
Better by FAR is ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, where the band set the backing to ‘sexy thrusting cyber glam rock’ factory default and increase the falsetto by 14.21% for maximum affect. Add in bonus whispers and guitaring disguised-as-keyboards-disguised-as-guitar and I’m spent by the end of it, utterly defenceless as the beautiful ‘Map Of The Problematique’ lights out for the stars drenched in piano and loneliness, rocking out in a pulsating wormhole of wegret*^. It’s one of the five songs here I think of as my absolute favourite track on the LP.
As I have hinted Queen are the, self-confessed, touchstone for Muse and I would argue that unlike it’s LP closing extroverted chum, ‘Soldier’s Poem’ is the best example of it here. A gorgeous change of pace, waltz time in fact, with a heartfelt lyric, lovely harmonies and a gentility of bearing; the kiss off ‘there’s no justice in the world/ And there never was’, big soppy optimists that they are. At 2:03 it is timed to perfection.
The military theme continues through the drumming on ‘Invincible’, the drums and vocals seeming coming at us through the skirling storm, as the (black) whole builds to a climax that surely needed recording on the summit of a lonely mountain during a space storm, in the rain, with ogres. It’s not one of my favourites.
Flipping Black Holes over, ‘Assassin’ very much is one of my favourites. It’s excessively noisy and chaotic, built on one of those riffs that only Muse seem to produce, everything held together by Bellamy’s vocal gymnastics. There is particularly great rhythyming by Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme holding it all together.
The next three tracks don’t reach the same standards. The stomp is back for ‘Exo Politics’ – are politics like belly buttons? are you born with either inny, or exo politics? And ‘City Of Delusion’ lurches off into a space mariachi direction, that old cliché! Then ‘Hoodoo’ takes us all down, into a bit of a lull to be honest. Maybe it’s a ploy to set up a big ending?
… which duly arrives writ bigger than life itself in the shape of ‘Knights Of Cydonia’, one of my favourite tracks of this century so far and an enormous triumph of raw chutzpah. Effortlessly blending sound FX, Dick Dale surf guitar, nods to ‘Telstar’^^, Queen at their most operatic, spaghetti westerns, brass and Venusian falsetto, ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ is a rich utterly ludicrous dish. I love it and it accompanies me on every workout, run and long car journey I’ve done in the last 15 years.
My fave bit is when Bellamy cranks up his inner Bee Gee to 11, yanks his kiwi fruits and just lets rip, before taking us on home with some interstellar rocking out:
No one's gonna take me alive Time has come to make things right You and I must fight for our rights You and I must fight to survive
I only just learned that Cydonia is actually an area of Mars yesterday. So its probably based on a true story, or something. Dig it.
Okay so I admit Black Holes isn’t flawless, despite its glistening hyperspace sheen but it remains of my very favourite listens, I love the sound of a band straining (for), attaining and reframing for the epic. The production by Rich Costey is absolute state of the art, then and now and so it should be, the playing throughout is just immense from all concerned.
Yeah, I quite like this one. Maybe somebody else out there does too.
My copy of Black Holes dates from 2015, it was never issued on vinyl until then, The band were no friends of us vinyl lovers, apart from issuing singles which I bought slavishly. Boo! Muse, boo!
Anyway I was glad to get my mitts on a copy as soon as I could. I’ve never thought very much of the Hypgnosis cover art for Black Holes though, essentially four men not in the first flush of youth sat around a table looking like someone just farted, badly.
1098 Down.
*because lead single and frankly awesome video:
**hence forward to be known as Black Holes in a bid to ease the worldwide pixel shortage^.
^not to be confused with the worldwide pixie shortage which has something to do with an evil witch and a plot to dehorn the last unicorn in the world, at midnight at the centre of Stonehenge.
*^not to be confused with regret, wegret is shared romantic remorse. Feel free to start using it today. You’re welcome.
^^on which Bellamy’s old man played guitar.
What I usually do is hit play and then read and sure enough up pops Dick in the take. Scary.
I am legion CB.
You are that and a few other things including a man of many tunes.
I will give this a go cause u said so. The first cut you posted has a Dick Dale and the like feel and that works for me.
Here’s yet another band that has been in my must-listen list for quite a while. I guess they have stayed there for longer than most because I usually read some pretty polarizing stuff about these guys.
I think you’ll like them Matt. Trust me I’m (not) a doctor.
A name I know, but I couldn’t name a tune. If 1537 rates this one, that’s my entry point.
They are superb – legends amongst me, my family and Kieran at work. Think Queen with a gazillion extra pyrotechnics and bonus falsetto-ness-ing.
Oh and all the suckers who cram themselves into stadiums to see ’em.
Great! I will start here thanks!
I really enjoyed this post. I liked Muse at first, I caught a show of theirs for Origin of Symmetry but I think I started tuning out around the point of Black Holes – there’s something about Matt Bellamy that bothers me as he seems a bit up his own arse but I shall dust this one off for another listen as it’s been easily a decade since I heard anything from it
Cheers Tony and welcome to my gilded palace of nonsense and sin.
I jumped on board at Black Holes and stayed up until Drones (which is a brilliantly heavy LP). I get your point on Mr Bellamy totally, I think that’s Muse’s trouble (if stadium seller outers and gazillionaires can be said to have trouble!) I don’t think anyone finds then very relatable at all.
Maybe that’s what keeps them spacey, detached and chrome-plated.
I picked up a slew of Muse at a charity shop a few years back, and they all kind of blurred together. I think I’ll have to listen to this one then come back for your (no doubt) erudite and penetrating words.
It doesn’t get more F-ing erudite than me Bruce! I’m the MF-ing eruditest F-er in the eruditerverse.
I think they’re great (up until and including the LP Drones).
A music teacher of Mrs 1537’s acquaintance eschews all popular music, apart from Muse. She hears something that different in them, especially around the time of Origin of Symmetry (which is another cracker).
Black Holes has a very relatable glam rock pelvic action to it.
Wow, these guys sound great. They make good music videos also.
Thank you for visiting my gilded palace of sin.
Yup, they are a wonderful, shiny, futuristic crew – with a sense of the ridiculous, which is what I really like best!
LOL on your description of your blog. My library has some of their CDs but not this one. I’ve got some on the way 🙂
Please let me know how you get/got on with them.
I’ve listened to “Drones” so far and really like it. I have others on the way. One thing I’ve noticed is that their music isn’t just for background noise. It makes you want to listen to what they have to say.