Predicting the future is fraught with danger. Apart fro the rather obvious risk of getting it completely wrong and thus being forever laughed at – you may scoff, but you never see David Icke doing the snooker these days – you run the risk of people using the ever-powerful weapon that is hindsight to tell you that you were always on to a loser. Segway? What were you thinking? Waterworld? No-one wants to see Kevin Costner playing a fish-man. Millennium Dome? Don’t make me laugh. Dick Rowe had plenty of reasons for not signing the Beatles, but does anyone want to hear them? No. He’ a loser, end of.
So it’s a risky game, but ELM will hold its hand up and say that if you had told us in 2000 that a dreary nu-prog band with Freddy Mercury issues would have been one of the UK’s biggest bands, we’d have laughed at you. But that is what happened with Muse. This band sold out Wembley. Impressive enough, until you realize we missed out the word ‘Stadium’. Yes, 80,000 people apparently thought enough of Matt Bellamy and co to go all the way to an expensive football stadium and listen to them, cementing their place in the cultural pantheon. And we still can’t quite believe it has happened.
Are Muse bad? Well, yes, but not in a hateably awful Pigeon Detectives way. They do what the do – operatic, overblown, widdly rock with sixth-form lyrics and massive production. It really is the kind of thing which should have been illegal after the Pistols, never mind Nevermind, but there it is, striding along like a whey-faced colossus intent on sitting down and thinking about, y’know, stuff whilst reading a William Gibson book. It’s irritating, like a spot in an unseen place.
So how did it happen? Well, people like Queen. I’ve never managed to get my head round that one either, but it’s a fact. And Muse do sound an awful lot like Queen at their most bombastic. And while not exactly Goth in its Cure Pornography sense, it’s impossible when listening to Muse to avoid thinking about Sisters of Mercy or The Mission. Bands most people thought were long-gone and best forgotten. But the good thing about being terminally uncool is that cool people don’t get to decide whether or not it is successful. And thus Muse move ever away from the rules which govern normal bands and into their own universe.
So Muse get ever-bigger, ever-sillier and ever-more successful. It really is a mystery, but not one that’s likely to end soon. The pasty will inherit the Earth one day, and these boys are their advanced guard.
Filed under: General Stuff Tagged: | cure, goth, mission, Muse, Pigeon Detectives, sisters of mercy
