The 2nd Law by Muse

I have come to find out that this band has been making music for a decade or more and I have had no real conception of what kind of band they were. I saw them on Saturday Night Live last year and found them so uninteresting that I fast forwarded through their performance. Recently I think I saw Kate Hudson on a talk show and she evidently is married and has had a baby with their front man.

So, with a slow week in record releases recently I decided to listen to their new album. I was quite pleasantly surprised. First it must be pointed out that I will not be going back to listen to the old catalog as I do in some cases, and most likely I will not be firing up Muse in any playlist of mine.

That said this album is strong and I do understand the appeal they have. As I listened three or four times to the album I hear influences that are far ranging. One cannot listen to any British band with a sound like theirs and not think of the glory days of Freddie Mercury and Queen but easily heard also on some notes is a bit of Bono. More easily discernible, at least to me, are traces of the pageantry of Use Your Illusion era Guns and Roses, and frequently Michael Hutchence comes to mind. So clearly the boys in Muse have many influences.

The album is strong and the interesting thing for me is that I have no idea what songs are the singles on this album. The band will be making another visit to SNL this weekend and it will be interesting to compare my reviews to the songs that htey play.


Standout tracks on this album are Madness and Panic Station with the latter dropping a few F Bombs and bearing witness to the tones of Hutchence. Operatic and bigger than life with a chanting backdrop, and a scream that compares with the singer from the Darkness the song Survival rocks. It is as big a sound as you will find in today's music. I am going to tell my son about it, a move I will probably regret when he starts playing it with his super speakers upstairs nightly. Still I feel compelled to share it with him.

A bit more accessible, still with a bit of an operatic voice, Follow Me is another winner that would best be played loud and sang strong. The other standout track for me is a song called Explorers that roars from a slow start, with piano backdrop into a fully orchestrated song in which the incredible tones and strength of the singer's voice is on display.

At the end of the album is a rather indulgent two song set both of which are called The Second Law that one will have to be a big fan to embrace but that said this album is strong enough that the band deserves to be a little excessive with their experiments.

This is a very strong album and for those of us concerned with the prevalence of bubblegum pop, boy bands, and rap music this is a hopeful sign that their are good modern bands that could easily have succeeded twenty or thirty years ago. I will not have this album on my rotation but were I in my teens and early twenties again this album by Muse would be at the top of my playlist.