Almost a decade ago, I went to a disappointing festival in Holland. Driven to distraction by the crowd – a sixth-form disco stuck between the third and fourth circles of Dante's inferno – I, on the advice of a friend, went to see Muse. Their theatrical pomp and overblown, muscular attack took the top of my head off and replaced my brain with a great big lump of wallop.
The news, then, that their latest album, Drones, is a concept set to become a musical makes perfect sense. It also explains the, at times, over-expository lyrics and the big theme slapped on the front. Fans of Banksy will think it coruscating political satire. Others may opt for tiresome, humdrum cliché. Still: books, covers… let’s press on, shall we?
The first thing that becomes apparent from the opener, “Dead Inside”, is that musically, this is much more fun than you might expect – certainly more than any song documenting complete loss of hope in a totalitarian state has any right to be. It sounds a bit like Cameo for Christ’s sake! The march of evil (“Psycho”), is a glam stomp, cut from the same cloth as 2009’s “Uprising”, while “Reapers” is all low-slung, high-density riffs – like AC/DC trying to escape the gravitational pull of a dying star while, at the same time, borrowing a melody from George Michael’s “Freedom” – an alarmingly neat trick to pull off. “The Handler” and “Defector” are, similarly, Muse going back to doing what they do best, namely posturing, paranoid pop-prog: think Queen with pro-tools and a conspiracy theory plug-in. So far, so good.
Not every punch lands however. “Mercy” and “Revolt” are far too straight-ahead pop, and the final suite of songs has issues. The Pink Floyd guitar tones in “The Globalist” I can forgive. I’ll even let them off the indulgent baroque barbershop of “Drones”. That said, there’s no excuse for any song that starts off like someone playing U2’s “One” through a practice amp (“Aftermath”).
Overall, Drones marks a welcome return to a more familiar, more grounded sound. It may well be that the concept makes more sense on the stage than on the stereo, but, for now, this will do just fine.