I don’t think anybody was all that surprised when Muse’s “Hysteria” was voted the best bassline of all time (disagreed, sure, but it’s not surprising. It’s one giant fuck of a groove). They have a tremendous sense of bombast, an ability to make a song sound so much larger than it has any right to be (seriously. See “Resistance” and “Knights of Cydonia”). Unfortunately, that gets blurred by a tendency to sound like the band Radiohead is trying really badly not to be anymore.
With The 2nd Law, Muse has put together a partial departure from their mainstay sounds. And for the life of me, it does nothing quite so much as remind me of Zooropa.
Bear with me. Just before they released Zooropa is when U2 finally got big enough to do whatever they damn well pleased. What they did with that freedom was put out a record that had a ton of sounds and influences that they never could have gotten away with before Achtung, Baby made them true superstars. There’s a lot of bizarre stuff and a distinct turn toward the then-emergent electronic dance sound. For U2 it was a brick, but likely a heck of a fun record to make since it sounded nothing at all like the U2 people were paying for.
The 2nd Law isn’t that big of a jump. You can still recognize Muse as the musicians beneath the tracks, and quite readily. But there’s a lot of little tweaks. The big, sweeping, cinematic songs we’ve come to associate with Muse have less of a driving arena sound and float closer to the cellos-on-the-edge-of-madness orchestration that marks the best of Wings (“Supremacy”, in particular, evokes strokes of “Live and Let Die”); there’s no real presence of that maddeningly forceful bass, and we hear a lot of strings. A lot. There’s a good injection of other influences from the 70s and 80s; “Panic Station“‘s riff feels like The Edge trying to play The Game-era Queen. The softer songs are also smoother, more head-noddingly ambient than something like “Starlight” (they’re also annoyingly clustered in the middle of the record). There’s a clear influence of club music and not in a negative way. Of course, no Muse album would be complete without a Radiohead sound-alike, and in The 2nd Law‘s case it’s “Animals”, four and a half minutes ripped directly from the flip side of Hail to the Thief. It’s all well done; Muse are nothing if not excellent craftsmen. Unfortunately, most of the songs lack a bit of that vitality Muse capture so well in their music (“Madness” and “Panic Station” being big exceptions).
And then there’s the dubstep. You can hear elements of it all through the record. For example, “Madness” – the lead single in the US – is built on a wub bass and has electronic voices scattered in strategic places (all underneath a straight-forward Muse mid-tempo vocal). It builds to “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable”, where we are treated to a full-frontal Skrillex-style bass drop amidst chattering drum loops and synths – again, with a lilting Matthew Bellamy vocal floating over it. It’s a bit jarring on the first listen, but oddly it works. There’s enough classic Muse there to know that this is an affectation, but there’s enough tweak to see that they aren’t getting complacent.
In the end, I can’t complain about The 2nd Law. It’s a solid Muse record, even if it’s not as energetic as Absolution or Black Holes and Revelations. And while I don’t see the band continuing to explore the same elements they have here in the future, as a departure it’s on the edge of the envelope without pushing it too far.
Final Grade: B+. It’s fresh, it’s crisp, but the center bogs down a bit and it just doesn’t quite have enough drive. Download “Supremacy”, “Madness”, “Panic Station”, and “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable” (if you’re feeling bold).
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