The Resistance [CD]

It's not really about the music anymore, is it. It's about the breadth and height of everything Muse do. It's about leaving a jet-stream in the sky. Any tune with a trajectory lower than the cosmos is presumably discarded, with arrangements generally sounding as expensive as battleships (intergalactic battleships, that is). Of course the music is not exactly incidental either; Muse's full-on fifth album The Resistance is packed hard with virtuoso musicianship, rigorous instrumental freak-outs and harmonies beamed between dimensions. It's simply what they do now, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. Long gone are the days of the feisty yet formal English post-grunge band with a falsetto bolt-on. So let the madness commence; "Uprising" gives the Dr Who theme tune a stomping glam makeover, "Undisclosed Desires" is like a prog-rock Justin Timberlake, "Guiding Light" is the sound of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling In Love" being jettisoned into the ether in an escape pod and "Exogenesis Symphony Part 1 (Overture)" is ambitious equal parts 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Flaming Lips and a belting Brian May style guitar solo sent straight from the roof of Buckingham Palace. They've not moved on enormously from the grandiosity of Black Holes & Revelations, not that it matters--they've found the place where they're most comfortable. That place just happens to be balanced on the precipice, travelling at light speed in expensive space-suits. --James Berry

Less earnest and self-regarding than Radiohead and less free trade-hippie than Coldplay, Muse know exactly how guilty a pleasure they can be. Stuffing their albums with sing-along pomp and circumstance, their days as sub-prog pariahs have long since passed. 

Comparing The Resistance with its 2006 predecessor, Black Holes and Revelations, is never going to be easy. The latter was an audacious leap into the hallowed area where cosmic meets commercial in a way not seen since Dark Side of the Moon. There is a distinct development here, but a self-produced heaping on of classical motifs and Queen-style histrionics isn’t necessarily the one we were hoping for. It’s not that they’re taking themselves too seriously, more that you’re never sure if the listener is supposed to.

It all starts splendidly with Uprising. While owing the late Delia Derbyshire some royalties with its Dr Who theme glitter stomp, it shows that Muse know how to whip up proper chart action. Pop sensibilities create a certain tension throughout, although by the closing three-part ‘symphony’, Exogenesis, they’ve jettisoned such relative restraint for string-drenched overkill, albeit laced with incomprehensible semi-sci-fi shenanigans. Still, this final folly/masterstroke works well because, despite its grand designs, it has a touch of ELO magic about it.

And speaking of grand designs, The Resistance retains Bellamy’s preposterous adherence to conspiracy theories – it’s maybe this that stops it being a solid gold classic. The mismatch between a rapidly maturing musical vision and chunks of John Perkins’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman puts Muse firmly back in the X File marked ‘life’s not fair and someone’s to blame’.

Having said that, quoting Chopin or Saint-Saëns verbatim isn’t necessarily maturation either, but time and again Muse remind you of how good they are at making your pulse race. MK Ultra is a coruscating live favourite-in-waiting, while I Belong to You has enough 70s piano-driven bounce to make you forget all the grim paranoia lying beneath the surface.

At times Bellamy can sound like a rock equivalent of Mulder as he wails “I want the truth!” on the rabble-rousing Unnatural Selection. Someone should tell him that the truth lies in his band’s very capable hands. Muse remain a national treasure, but not one that Nicolas Cage is likely to find. --Chris Jones

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The Resistance is the first Muse album since the critically acclaimed, triple platinum selling Black Holes and Revelations that spawned five top 20 singles, was nominated for a plethora of awards, including the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, and concluded with two sold out nights at the newly opened Wembley Stadium. It was recorded in Northern Italy, produced by the band themselves and mixed by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent. In terms of sound and sonic vision The Resistance is their most ambitious long-player yet, which is clearly saying something. They have blown up the robo-funk/monster riff/stadium space rock sound of Black Holes... and widened their viewfinder even further to take in an even greater horizon of sound.