Quick Thoughts on those Two New Arcade Fire Single

If that is starting Suburbs I will be so happy, but...I hate the double-tracked vocals and slow vocal phrasing right now. The bassline feels ugly, just going along on its own. It...this is arcade fire's new direction, I follow, but I'm not getting the same sense of invention that I did before. It feels like a radio bite. When the drums re-enter around 2:25 I feel them, but then I lose them again. The songs on Funeral took the entire track to reach their climax, but never lost their strong energy, which derived from simple parts mixing in complex and beautiful ways. On first listen this song lay down on the table, took its clothes off, and screamed at me for a bit, and then fell off.
On second listen the groove feels more like a baptism. I guess the simplicity of it is jarring me. The instrumentation is like a punk band with a synthesizer, that's part of what throws me off. Still, this feels too processed to me, it's swells and falls back on its noise, not the spirit that was so clear on the last two LPs. Black Mirror, by contrast, swelled in slowly and then hit you over the head with its power. I'm not sure this more...sideways, punky, radio-conscious, simple startup really speaks to me like I was hoping it to. This is the first time I've had any concerns about the new LP. I'm liking the song more as it goes on, especially that breakdown has a lot to it. I'm just...concerned.

This is also different, more punky and radio in its production, but this is more welcoming in its lyrics. There's more going on under its simple groove; the bassline doesn't feel flaccid or pudgy (...), with the other parts with it. The disco stuff seems weird at first, but that four-on-the-floor drumbeat was always present in their music. This makes a lot more sense to me as a sequel to the rest of their music: innovative, creative in its themes and entrances, and powerful. I still don't "get" the production style, which feels blown out in ways that even Neon Bible wasn't. This electropop vocabulary will take more getting used to. Regine's interjections bring me right back to Funeral, eeee. I just realized part of the problem is my bass-heavy speakers, but still that last buildup didn't have everything I expected it to.

Again, though, this I can give more of a chance than that first track. Also, this album seems to be able music a lot, so the level of commentary about music by enacting either what they're hoping for or fighting against is important.

Overall, I hope I'm able to change enough to appreciate this promise.

Suburbs/Month of May and Album Playlist of the Half-Month

I'll start with the small news:

Just like I've had the same playlist stuck on the "Now Playing" thing on my Zune , I like to switch it up every so often...like every half-month. So I'll pick a random point in the alphabet and harp on it, giving short thoughts or longer ones maybe baby.

This week:

Wilco: "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"

My dad was the first one to get me into this group/album, so my first memories of it are from a few long car rides, and listening to orange-tan colored rock music tinged with something I couldn't recognize. Second was drumming on "Jesus, Etc." and not realizing it was from this album, and then I started getting into it again. For the last instrumental concert of the year I played drums on "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" with 6 kids from the Jazz Band...it was hard, but really special. The entire album is easy to listen to but hard to pick apart, not only lyrically but in musical motifs beyond the trite "music/noise." What I feel in it, though is a hotel filled with resting anticipations and wishes, trying to free themselves and taking weirdly-lighted trips out into the "real world."

Wrecked Machines: "Worried World"

It's...good trance? I didn't give it too many listens but I felt like I was listening to something more artful than a lot of dance music can do for me.

Dosh: "Wolves and Wishes"

Probably the favorite stuff on the playlist. I first got suggested it asking around on /mu/ for music that used music boxes, and heard it again at a religious conference. Some of the rhythms and energy remind me of Akron/Family, or some of the hip but none of the hop of Avalanches, or none of the catharsis and all of the energy of Explosions in the Sky. Hooah. Beautiful rambling instrumental music, I could dance to this for ages.

Patrick Wolf: "Wind in the Wires"

I'm not a fan. I enjoyed it at first when I was able to follow the drama of it. And it's all about drama, the kind of suspension of disbelief that an album about Gypsy Kings and the Shadowsea and all sorts of fantasy characters to take place. But really, once you take all the sexy club-style bass out of "Libertine" (which I had to do, on the train), what I'm getting is a lyrically freewheeling musically dry set of stuff. Like, listen to Tristan with the bass low. That's what the album is for me, funky but dead. Then set the bass way up and rock out to it.

The Unicorns: "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?"

I think there are only two songs in the world that are perfect, fully perfect, that nothing could be done to them to make them better. "Tuff Ghost" is one of them ("Swans (Life After Death)" is the other, heheh). I either see this album as a half-assed concept album or a pretentiously thrown-together set of songs trying to be about death, but some of the songs just kill. What's weird about it is that even though I feel the album's concept teeters a lot, the songs are so strange in form (the abrupt ending of "I Don't Wanna Die" or the long unbalanced jam of "Child Star") that they lean on each other a lot to make sense, so there is a flow. I'm overharshing the concept, too, it's not that...argh....I guess just like Islands' first album, this is really about making music, musical death and creative death and life, and I should just feel the flow. And I do. Oh I do. You can't cause I'm already dead.

Lunar: "Wall of Sound"

Is it sad that I can say that this is one of those "classical/electronica bands who don't do much for publicity and release all their music online for free" and not be alone? A lot of their music feels tired, especially when the instrumentation strives to give the music a "classical feel" in an otherwise techno song. But in terms of soundscapes and crafting...pillars of sound...they do a nice job. Some of the songs have creative strokes of real weight, too. It does happen. Just...overproduced blagh.

OK OK OK BUT NOW even though the news has broken ARCADE FIRE'S NEW SINGLE TIME.

The first thing that identifies The Suburbs as an AF song is the rolling saloon-style piano chords over the bass and drums, with maybe a distant wail of strings, in an airy sort of production style that you can't mistake from Neon Bible. More archetypes in the lyrics: suburbs, driving, mother, bombs, lost feelings, kids, family. And the suburbs! Didn't we spend a whole album on that one?

Stuff's different, though. In Funeral AF did all they could to show the reasons to paint and reject these suburbs, from the dysfunctional relationships to war and loneliness and lots of driving and water and leaving places. In coming back to this topic, though, we're breaking through the stark and wildly colorful funeral picture into something even stranger: the dead body of youth, after it left. We're exploring what Neon Bible seemed to have so strongly left behind, to travel into realms of political commentary and loss in an ocean of negative media influence.

Instead we're right into the memories, not the present or the future but the past.Moving in your mom's van, what Funeral implied is now facing us in The Suburbs: we can't escape this past, and even if the feelings go past the memories stay and kids are still screaming screaming screaming. Who knows what it means now. It was all about the childhood gestures of drawing lines between us and them, screaming and yelling, getting hard, and getting bored with it all. Did it mean anything? Ever? The loss of Funeral was the idea and meaning of youth, but surfacing from the hard-life torment of Neon Bible, they look back and the loss has mutated into something else. Something else. Something else. Still screaming.

That's exciting fucking territory to travel to. What excites me even more is that even though AF released the title track of the work, we know from Neon Bible that the title track is only an exposition, a quick look into what an album is doing. I'm not sure that there are musical frontiers here, but it reminds me most of a slowed-down verison of "Poupee de Cire / Poupee de Son" cover from the Split 7" with LCD Soundsystem. Maybe some of "Cold Wind," actually a whole lot of "Cold Wind." Usually Arcade Fire songs can be thought as pure crescendos from A to B, but with this cut the beat's always on the same, and what gets added is a bit more melancholy. The descending electric guitar, synth wails, and strings that lay suspended in the air crying out under the harsher electric bass and (really well done) drums. Acoustic guitar thoughout is a great touch, adding a folky touch. The piano always plays the same progression diatonically, but it morphs it into more spaces...the weirdo major turn earlier in the song becomes a morning pedal point, drilling drilling drilling already past already past. The song breaks maybe a lit of mold, but mostly it takes everything Arcade Fire has done so well and puts it into a 5 minute romp/funeral march. Maturity is here, and also a lot of confusion.

If Month of May had xylophone in it, you could tell it was an Arcade Fire song. I...I can't even...not right now...maybe later...

Concert Review: Flobots (5/25) and other things

Hey! So this show wasn't just Flobots, but I didn't get to catch the openers. I have no experience with the group beyond "Handlebars," and had never been up to Allston, or specifically to Harper's Ferry. It's a beautiful hole-in-the-wall with, yes, cheap beer, which is apparently why a lot of people were there. But the whole setup was casual, with no biggie ticket check even though they were a little on the pricey side ($20?). Dedicated to the band? Maybe 150. But that made it all the so much bigger.

I know shit about Flobots, but that stopped me. Stopped nobody; you could feel people gravitating in off their barstools to be here. Musically I'm into what they do, I guess. Start with: a very tight drummer, who knows when to kick on and kick off, and how to throw in double-time on the snare and hihats to funk up a beat without derailing it. The jittering mass of their songs couldn't have gone along without their bassist, who not only was tight, but creative and clearly into it. The violist did some beautiful work, with her vibrato and attention to tone, but she wasn't always able to get beyond her role and character as "contrast." Especially in a show without horns, you need to find ways to add melody, and she could've been more outgoing and stabilized some of the grooves. The guitarist was a huge geek, but I loved him dearly. Both as frontmen and as skilled musicians, though, the two rappers stole the show.

I think of rap as three things only: rhythm, tone, and beat, in order of importance. I'm going to use Busdriver's solo on Islands' "Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone" to illustrate what I'm talking about. Rhythm and cadence are just the same as in drumming; I think that any good rap line should be able to double as a snare solo on drums. Finding ways to find those cracks in the song where offbeats, syncopation, or (favorite!) triplet runs push it forward. Here's what I'm talking about, to the right: it holds up on its own, just as music.

The manipulation of those rhythmic elements and motives has to be married to the tools of poetic words: rhymes, masculine and feminine lines, assonance, consonance, all of those simple tools of language. Sounds need to link to other sounds: in rhyme with another, in contrast with a line before it, in a pun that links back to another syllable. You can listen to rap like it's scatting.

I'm worst with the meaning. Even if that "Whalebone" song doesn't really say much that's sensible (or audible), you get the main themes pretty clearly and cleverly: being lost in a swirling realm of media, fame and fantasy, corruption, etc. Good rap can rally even if it's not specific; it can paint a picture through association, not literal words. I'm a sucker for instrumental music, but the power of a Flobots song couldn't be the same with out its lift. Decyphering their lyrics in real time was a treat, "Panacea for the Poison" especially, but everything! "Drop the debt and legalize weed" called to the crowd as much as the music behind it did, and both of them were amazing at all three things.

The two rapper added their interplay to the mix. They pushed each other in their friendly yet intense trading of lines, they spoke together and varied their tone to vaunt the whole song up, they melded their personalities against the characters that every other performer was in and blew it up with a word. Chain reactions across the floor. It was beautiful.

They wanted you to put your hands in the air and you put your hands in the air not because you felt like you had to but because you wanted to because together you could do something really exciting. They gave you messages scaled to a human level: not "overturn the Arizona immigration law now" or "equal rights for people of all sexualities and gender-identities now" or "troops out now", but prayers, wishes, conversations, and questions, meant to open our soul to what really matters: "standing up in a room. that's when change happens. Stand up, stand up, stand up..."

Concert Review: Toro Y Moi + Jemina Pearl + Islands

First: holy shit.

Second: I spent the entire night in front row directly, Jemina Pearl's head was six inches from my crotch, Nick Diamonds stroked my head and sang the first few lines of No You Don't with me.

It was a wonderful concert! The Flaming Lips concert a few weeks back made me realize that I am never again going to have as wonderful and transcendental an experience as I did then, and that's ok. So I'm coming into concerts more humbly, and there's a lot to like at the show.

I'm in loooove with the Middle East downstairs. It's a dive, the ceilings are slanted, the whole thing is sprawled out, shit just happens there and there's no bullshit in the way of it. Shit without bullshit. Just people playing shows from 9 PM to 12 AM, with 8 AM doors.

I got there at 8:15 or so, after stopping in with my girlfriend. The place has the definition of shitty bathrooms, but I quickly changed into a nifty new tshirt and some nice, simple jewelry. I love the coat check, took a lot of stress of my back. Because I get very...physical at concerts, screaming lyrics and using my entire body as a sort of air instrument, and in this case sort of worshipping the crazy presence of Mr. Diamonds, so it's nice to not have to carry shit. I didn't get to see my friend James there, which sucked and made me feel lonely, but my friend's roomate was there, and we chatted for a while about the music. I'm pretty bad with talking to strangers at concerts, except if I'm pumped and they're inebriated, but I did get into a conversation with one guy. Mostly, I just held my ground and listened to the music while texting in the interim.

Anyway, music. Opener was Toro Y Moi, also introducing himself as Charles. He came on stage in a sweater over a long-sleeved collared shirt, with these really thick glasses, and did his thing for 40 minutes before vacting. A really nice, humble sort of guy, and he did wonderful with the niche he put himself in. That niche was...transamerican synth-pop tinged with hip-hop and a bit of psychedelia, which is a surprisingly fleshed out genre (Rrrrrrrratatat! sorta). But hell, he had really good beats and varied them at good points, was a decent keyboardist, knew how to put a good soundscape (necessary for psychidelia) and good rhythms (necessary for pop) and good beats (necessary for hip-hop). All in all, I was very intrigued and happy with what went on. The guy is also the humblest, nicest guy you'll ever find, if that's a plus. But with his macbook and his korg and a mic...he did quite a bit very well. I was really happy about it.

I spent most of last night diving into Jemina Pearl's newest, and my general opinion of her stuff is somewhat positive. She's agressive and honest, in a refreshing sort of way. Of course she falls so easily into useless cliches, and her powerpop style leads to a lot of undue comparisons (and collaborations) with Iggy Pop. I had no expectations, and what I got was generally good. I knew the songs, and they have a good beat and a few goods riffs, while managing to somehow NOT be total hipster bullshit. I hate to say it, but it was cute. However pissed she is, I still got that vibe: "Aw, here's what Jemina's doing! She's writhing and spitting and kissing her guitar-playing boyfried. how nice" I'll give her a lot of credit for putting all of her spirit out there, even if it was clear that she was...either pissed or tipsy coming into the show. They were tight enough, they were together enough. It was alright. Not my thing. But you know? I think Iggy was there, looking disdainfully at the group. Mighta just been another weirdo with spiky black hair.

There were two disappointments to the Islands show: the fact that their ensemble was so small (no violinist, no bassonist, no freestyler like Bus Driver, just drums, a guitar/synth player, Jamie on Guitar/Synth, and Nick on guitar/vocals; and the sorta obvious fact that they are not the subtle and skilled players that seemed to record Return to the Sea. None of that...really mattered to me. The folks in the front few rows saw the setlist as it was on the floor...and we starting freaking out in excitement.

Switched On [Vap] [Costume]
No You Don't [Vap] [Costume]
Disarming the Car Bomb [Vap]
Tender Torture [Vap]
Creeper [Arm]
Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone [Sea]
Vapours [Vap]
Heartbeat [Vap]
Don't Call Me Whitney Bobby [Sea]
On Foreigner [Vap]
The Arm [Arm]
Devout [Vap]
EOL [Vap]
I'm In Control [Vap]
----
Rough Gem [Sea]
Swans [Sea]



Parts of this were to be expected. They're still early in touring Vapours, so they're of course going to play the whole damn thing; and since Jamie wasn't around for Arm's Way (and perhaps because its quality is slightly lower), they won't do much from it: so if we're lucky, we'd get some key hits from Return to the Sea. Thus, we get 4 fantastic songs from the album, 2 of the best ones from The Arm, and almost the entire Vapours album (missing The Drums, I think, which is fine), which they managed to make very, very cool live.

I was a bit frustrated at the beginning of Switched On. Yeah, Nick in his white jumpsuit and diamond-studded cape was cool enough, and his batman glasses were even cooler, and his strange and dancey theatricals were nice and all...but I was struck by how...open their sound was. With only 3 guys on instruments (and the drummer on samples as well), there's not a lot of mobility to take everything that was detailed and exciting about their music. They held together well; they had the energy and the synergy, and they played and had fun with it. Nick seems to be a pretty understated sort of guy ("Woo, yeah." "You're awesome, Nick!" "Haha, thanks." "Are we awesome?" "Yes, you are in fact awesome...yes you are. I'd have to say that, though the purpose isn't to compare, that we are in fact more awesome." "Yeah, you're right."), and so it sort of fit. Most of the melodic lines and divisions of part were contained throughout the whole thing; it just took Nick 2 songs to take his cape off and pick up the guitar. No You Don't also showed their limitations, but also their strength of spirit.

It was at this song, Disarming the Car Bomb, that I noticed how every song was being done under tempo, seemingly for the sake of the instrumentalists. Anyway, Disarming annoyed me for the longest time, but live it's pretty nice! Think Ideoteque song become IDEOTEQUE CLOSER. Great beat, great use of drums. The drums were pretty constant throughout the whole thing, he didn't let up much to let things pass, instead just redoing rhythms and going along with a groove. He was on fire, though. It was great. Tender Torture was really good, Nick added in the guitar well, the the versatility of Jamie and the other guy was pretty clear, on synth and guitar.

Creeper was a song that they took a bit of creative liberty with. I think they changed around certain parts, cut out in a few places that weren't cut out, and might've messed with the structure a bit. I expected they'd play it live, and they did not disappoint. What was clear after No You Don't was made abundantly clear now: these guys can do amazing things on simple sorts of beats. Whalebone was great and all...it was sort of a letdown not having any freestyling over the bridge part, but they shortened it and groooved around a bit. All live acts have to face the challenge of muddiness in sound, and they did a very good job at keeping things...lucid. They kept it much more stripped down then Jemina (who is the biggest cause for my current deafness, fuck her boyfriend), but they were so energized that it was easy to get into.

Vapours was all cute and shit, clearly Nick just wanted to be cute and shit too. And so he was. Heartbeat was great, as expected: beat-driven and direct, so great for them (harkening back to the Unicorns, I guess). Don't Call me Whitney, Bobby was fucking religious. I just...everybody knew it, everybody was into it, the drummer made it better, everybody covered the parts of the song, but the sound was rounded out. It was better live. It was short and wonderfully sweet.


On Foreigner, and soon after that EOL, and I'm In Control are all in my mind a) generally bad songs, and b) songs that they did a really good live job in. Think of...Radiohead adding that bassline under The Gloaming in the Hail to the Thief tour. Kinda like that. They just do more with the synths, draw better beats together and make them less...floaty and stupid. The Arm had a few musical fuckups in it, but it had a lot of good pausing and changes of feel, which made it very very seizing and compelling: WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE GOING NEXT WOOO ISLANDDS ARE FOREVER WOOOO.


They left, came back, and played the opening chords of Rough Gem (the fucking tease actually played the opening guitar part for Volcanoes, and then switched. the bastard) and everybody went to and through the roof. It's a classic, it was distributed across iTunes and made famous, and it's just a really good song. They handled the instrumentation well, and let the synth catch a few liens while having hand claps on the quiet "Dun-dun-dun" of the hook. It was slower, but the drums and the synth really fit together nicely. They weren't their best at musicanship

In the few moments that I could actually hear the chords of Swams, I could tell that they were fucking up. A lot. It's a complex and detailed song, one requiring a lot of work and focus, and they didn't have the skill or the composure for their closer. But you know? It was fine. The memory factor was enough. They played it downtempo, making it around 11 minutes, but everything was tthere...fuck, did they add a few beats on the first proggy (major) part after the third statement of the theme, then going into the final (minor) proggy part? I think they did. That fucked me up. But all-around, I was psyched enough not to care about being off by two frets or playing in the wrong key. It was Swans, for christ's sake. It was Swans!

All in all: I loved the concert because I love Islands and Nick's funny and they have a good synergy. Also, Nick has really smooth hands. I think he just wanted to feel my hair.

Anyway, a summary: FUCK YEAAAHHHH

Islands

I've been listening to Islands non-stop for most of the weekend. I'm seeing their Middle East show in Boston on the 4th, and I'm wondering what to expect. I've been reading about the Arm's Way shows, and how much screwing around they did; leaving the stage and gallivanting around the streets, and letting Bus Driver freestyle in the streets before folks dispersed. I have classes the following morning, so I hope things don't go too late; but hell, it could be fun.

I discovered Islands a few years ago through Keat, although it took me a while to plug them in and give them a serious listen. I've been fangirling over them to anybody and everybody since I plugged in "Return to the Sea" on a long car ride home.

"Return to the Sea" struck me in a lot of different ways. Yeah, I liked the creepyness and darkness that their lyrics contain, but once they overdid it in "Arm's Way," that lost its luster. The tone of the album struck me immediately. They put a lot of work into production, like any good pop album, but there are so many small touches that make the album magical for me to this day: the loose snare on "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby," the wailing at the beginning of "Swans," the slightly detuned whistling on "Humans," the clicky beginning percussion for "Volcanoes," and the untouched piano of "Bucky Little Wing." They paid a lot of attention to atmosphere and tonality, how the album would actually sound in your ear and how important that was. I apprecaite that a lot.

The songwriting is also topnotch.

The arc of the album was the most compelling thing, for me. I maintain that "Swans" is a work of genius, and part of my reasoning for that lies in how it traces the rest of the album. It begins quietly and evocatively, far away from the noise and bluntness of the Unicorns year (there's a huge biographical aspect here, of course), slowly complexifying. Melody, even in the bass part is vital, and they use the drums to allow their song to unfold and curl back, letting the bits of piano or electric or wailing. The first verse / chorus part is balanced in its parts, not letting guitars or noise become the predominant force. In the second part, the piano gets so much more rhythmic importance, and the crazy wailing and the guitars trade prominance and importance. They keep grooving on those same bits, and have a nice breakdown which bleeds back into so much more noise. We get one last, simple restatement, before everything gets back into full force, turning finally into a flat out prog rocky sort of ending. But just after that, all the parts break away into their parts, holding rhythms and bathing in the same noise without much in the way of direction. Where the hell are we? Where did we go in the last 9 minutes?

The song becomes more and more complex and layered, eventually more noisey and rocky, then breaking down, just as the album does. The sardonic "Humans" and creepily light "Whitney" become longer and more beat-heavy songs like "Rough Gem" and "Joggin' Gorgeous Summer," which in turn culminate in "Volcanoes." They're playing around with what pop does; sit back and hop along, or grab you. The end of the album is a huge decrescendo from "Volcanoes": "If" and "Ones" exist in their own, frightening sort of stripped down universe, and "Bucky" is simple in a way that no other song on the album dares to be. Just like "Swans," we built up to the crazy proggy stuff, and then had to face the consequences and results: this after-noise, this openness and use of silence in "Bucky" or the hypnosis of "Ones."

"Bucky," I think, is the best possible way to end the album. The song is simply piano and some vocal backing, and the structure is simple. There's no subtlty, on one hand, and no noise, on the other. The subject matter isn't creepy, like death or cannibalism, but simply stated and sad: racism and friendship, death and departure. It's the perfect cap on the album: "despite all the places and crescendoes we've gone through, let's break everything down and talk about something incredibly organic for a while. you'll have to wait through 4 minutes of rain to hear it, but it's worth it." And it is! It's a strange and exciting end to the kind of journey we've just gone through.



I highly doubt we'll hear much of "Return to the Sea." Even though Jamie's back, they have better songs to play at concerts. The entirety of "Arm's Way" sort of sucks, but has a better beat and must be easier to play; and of course, there's the new album to tour, and a lot of those cuts are very good for live or for radio. I expect "Switched On" for an opener, and somewere in there: "No You Don't", "Vapours" (maybe a closer), "Tender Torture" (definitely), "Heartbeat" (probably), "Disarming the Car Bomb" (likely), "The Arm" (totally), "J'Aime Vous Voir Quitter" (unless this is really a veiled reference to Jaime leaving, in which he wouldn't like to), "Creeper" (clearly), "We Swim" (maybe), "I Feel Evil Creping In" (yeah), and maybe "Rough Gem." Trust me, though, if they throw in "Swans" or break things down for "Bucky," you can be sure I'll be grasping at Nick and Jamie in lurv. I'll be on the sides hydrating during Toro Y Moi, but I'll be up at the front for Jemina Pearl.

So fucking EXCITED!

A Word on Muse's "The Resistance"

Most of the reviews for Muse's newest album are pretty bad...mixed in some parts, but mostly very derogatory. Many focus on how much they steal, from sources as wide as Chopin, Queen, Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, etc. Many focus on how goddamn ridiculous it is for 3 white kids from Devon to be wailing about social unrest and rebellion. Many focus on the degree to which you need to have your head up your ass to write a "symphony" called, of all things, Exogenesis.

There is a new song in three parts, more of a symphony than a song, which I have been working on sporadically for many years [...] As a large percentage of the composition is orchestral, I have never wanted to collaborate with a string arranger as they may make it 'theirs'. So I have been arranging the orchestral elements myself, which is taking a long time. It should hopefully make the next album as the final three tracks.

For one thing, a symphony has such a nobler history, and much more rigidity than they dare to touch (most symphonies use Sonata form). Calling it orchestral is bullshit, as it's just the normal ensemble plus a few strings putting up a melody line. Continuing:

["Exogenesis: Symphony"] is influenced by Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, Chopin and Pink Floyd. It looks at the concept of 'panspermia'. It is a story of humanity coming to an end and everyone pinning their hopes on a group of astronauts who go out to explore space and spread humanity to another planet. Part 1 is a jaded acceptance that civilization will end. Part 2 is a desperate hope that sending the astronauts to find and populate other planets will be successful alongside the recognition that this is the last hope. Finally, Part 3 is when the astronauts realise that it is just one big cycle, and recognise that unless humanity can change it it will happen all over again

That's a pretty strong list of influences, and I can't say I hear anything besides Chopin in it. The thematic underpinnings that they talk about are, themselves, pretty ridiculous, and starting part 3 with a broken major chord in second inversion played over and over and over and over does not imply cyclicality. I could get deeper and deeper into the way that their approach irritates me, but let's just say that I don't feel that any of them are musical geniuses, or geniuses at all.

But y'know what? I love this album. I love it with all my heart.

I listen to Muse because of what they feel, not what they say or what they intend to mean. The whole damn album is suffused with their energy, taking all sorts of different forms; the hopping 12/8 of Uprising, the dystopic yet hopeful soaring of Resistance, the detached percussion (I had trouble wording this) of Undisclosed desires, the holy shit I am absolutely fucking soaring United States of Eurasia, etc. etc.

Two words on Eurasia: holy shit. For some reason, this piece just pushes my classically-trained buttons in the best possible way. The quiet piano, and very subtle increasing of complexity and crescendo leading to the first guitar chords like some sort of sound orgasm. Those chords in the beginning reference the chorus part, where the chromatic lines ascends and receds over a conserved baseline before the whole thing shifts into unison Eastern scales. That's brilliant, right there, that's balence. The second verse only does that more, using diffent chords and overpinnings to give the same sense of balence and slight modulation, and then creating total balence with all sorts of modulation in the chorus. The swirling drum riffs, rising piano chords, and string lines all pivot about that held bass note, giving this huge sense of reaching and achieving, and then....Eur-aaaaayyyyy-SIA! SIA! SIA SIA! It's Muse's bombast at its best, and in my mind, it's surprisingly artful.

A lot of the songs are like this. Exogenesis deserves a blog for itself and I'm not going to get into it, but it does have some classical integrity as well as that beautiful, compelling, totally self-absorbed bombast. It's an epic, really. The whole album is epic and scope, and for these guys to do that while being 3 white guys from Devon takes a certain amount of stupidity, and a certain amount of skill. I think it's possible to appreciate the album while reconciling both.