Over-blown, often cheesy, pompous and sometimes comical…whats there not to love about The Resistance?
At its heart, The Resistance is a quasi-concept album with political undertones that are more Orville than Orwell. But thats what makes The Resistance so endearing. Who wants conspiracy theories that are mundane enough to perhaps be 1% accurate (such as those voiced by Charlie Sheen) when you can have reptilian extraterrestrial invaders masquerading as world leaders or our existence on Earth being a result of DNA floating through space? But to be fair, what else would we expect from Matt Bellamy?
With as close to a down-to-earth start as you can get with Muse, The Resistance kicks off with the lead single from the album, the anthemic Uprising which sounds like the love child of Marilyn Manson and Blondie dressed up as Dr Who (an analogy you may have already come across). Then its straight to two tracks which would make good singles to follow up from Uprising. Resistance and Undisclosed Desires. Resistance is a surpassingly nice mix of a piano melody that sounds like it could fit perfectly into 90′s era house music and an all out rock track. Which leads nicely into the Depeche Mode inspired track Undisclosed Desires. A track which features a first for Muse – drummer Dominic Howard’s completely sampled drum beat. It’s a track that is very sparse that utilizes negative space very well, the pizzicato strings and Chris Wolstenholmes’ slap-bass blend together to create something which really does work excellently.
With the conventional third of the album done, Muse take us on a journey from Queen inspired harmonies to epic guitar anthems via an 80′s arena rock ballad.
Its mad, its bad (cha-mone), its arabic, its almost like Freddie Mercury reincarnated and its perhaps the most over-blown song you’re likely to hear this year! United States of Eurasia is easily one of the most memorable tracks from the album. With its arabic string bridges and harmony laden choruses, USoE acts as a pseudo national anthem for all the Eurasian countries (which is a feat you can only pull off as one of the worlds biggest bands!) but it isn’t the changes of pace throughout the track which suprise you the most, as if the track wasn’t crazy enough to begin with, Muse throw a curve ball in the shape of a cover of Chopin’s Nocturne Number 2, USoE is a close to schizophrenic music as you can get! But its placement in the album really highlights what is arguably the weakest song on the album, Guiding Light. A cheesy sounding 80′s power ballad drum beat starts the song which leads to the albums only conventional guitar solo, its sounds like what you would imagine Guns n Roses would sound like if they were good. This also highlights just how good the next two tracks are though. Unnatural Selection and MK Ultra go together as am amazing double-whammy of guitar led epic rock songs. With riffs in abundance, these tracks will please all but the most straight laced of Daily Mail readers.
The final third of The Resistance see Muse take an amazing step forward in their songwriting skills. I Belong To You / Mon Coeur S’ouvre a ta Voix takes us on a trip to the side streets of 1930′s Paris, with its almost jazz piano there is no doubting that this is an incredibly over-the-top fun song. Inspired by the opera of the same name, this track contains one of Muse’s greatest ever middle sections. An operatic piano and choir underline Bellamy’s (sometimes comical) French lyrics which eventually leads to an Oboe solo. A song that perhaps Muse made so that you could introduce your Grandparents to them.
The Resistance closes with what are the best 3 songs on the album. The 3-part Symphony Exogenesis is comprised of Pt. 1: Overture, Pt.2: Cross-Pollination and Pt. 3: Redemption (It all sounds very pretentious, but who can fault a band for doing what they want to do?). Brilliant use of sparse lyrics, amazing falsetto vocals, epic 40 part orchestra and some perfect piano solos really do show that this is a culmination of years of work. Although the 3-parts could perhaps flow together slightly better, theres no denying that its as close to perfect as you can get.
So there you have it. An album that can veer from amazing fun to incredible sincerity, its sometimes camp but always epic. Its going to be an incredibly cliched end to this review but here it is anyway…The Resistance (for me at least) is the album of the year.
