MUSE - Hey you crazy kids

The emotion from cringe is like this:

It's kind of awful, it's embarassing, yes, but there's a part of us that admits it's fun to acknowledge that, otherwise we wouldn't be watching it or listening to it.

When Muse is subjectively "bad", it's doing that. It's a zero-fuckism that I respect, and it's adds a dynamism and surprise element to the band that keeps it interesting.

The irony for me is of coming out of my bedroom when I was 14, and had literally no lights, listening to BH&R with a visualiser. Supermassive Black Hole was the first song where I was like, "what". It grew on me severely. I think the war on cringe is an advocate for lo-fi, raw, pwoper rock 'n' roll, or whatever. But there are elements of what makes something cringy or cheesy that are good. Pop rock, synth rock, funk/soul, this is all good gooseberry fool to throw into an album and make it work.

And it largely does work, inevitably you might not like all of it.

Let the cringe flow through you. Not everything has to be 00's post rock. For me, that's uplifting. If I don't feel this way, I just go back to a nostalgic place when I was a teenager.

How do I go back to that place? I listen to those albums, which will always be the same.

There are some incredible tracks on this record. That makes it objectively middling to good, imo, and depending on what you like and dislike, excellent. Delete the ones you don't like, everyone is free to do that, but if that risk was not there, Muse could never have been good.

I mean, if I was in a rock band I wouldn't want to be labelled as 'cringe". I kind of appreciate that kind of overblown, histrionic pop that Muse put out sometimes. I low-key loved Simulation Theory. But this album is gash.

I see.

Muse sort of manoeuvred themselves away from being a top band IMO, regardless of how good they still are live. And I wonder if they really needed to do that.

In their early years they were just a band doing what came naturally. And I think it shows in the albums.

I would probably agree with that. I honestly don't think they take their album output particularly seriously; the anecdotes and interviews around the original albums were very much the same. If you were to compare the impact and perhaps value of their touring performances alongside the album output, I'd say it's at least a 20:1 thing, maybe more. They add a few successful songs to the live circuit and that's that. It's like adding retro tracks into a game of Mario Kart.

They propagated and cultivated a music project, as a group of literal kids bored in Devonshire, and then just kept doing that. The difference now is they have tens of millions of £ and can do basically anything they want. The output should surprise no-one, yet somehow, it does - I like that.

I'm not really a recording musician and instead put together hundreds of live tracks; I have no idea how to play almost any of them. So I guess that informs my perspective too. I'm not really interested in objet des artes or finished articles, more the process and the performance. But when you focus on what is literally a commercial product, packaged and sold, designed to bankroll some period every couple of years and provide new food for more performances, which is what the band love, it's easy to dismiss the band, when they are still that; a band. They could be individuals living in different countries and putting stuff together over the Internet. They could be a group of AIs. Whatever.

Anyway, I rate this album good/10. The band are legendary.

I have a lot of respect for bands/artists who release music that they want to make rather than what will sell.

This album was built for headphones, the bass production is just immense. It's fun.

Listening on some Bose QuietComfort 25 (can't afford them, my partner found them abandoned at work).

Edit: holy gooseberry fool these cans are £219 on Amazon

Edit: Verona is decent with good sound, guitar was a little annoying on tinny laptop speakers. And it ends as a real heart belter that might be an unlikely favourite as Madness became.

Along with the heaviest songs, and the pace of the last 2 tracks and YMMFLIH, this is a strawberry floating ace contemporary Muse album that's extremely well executed.

It also really needs to be listened to as a full album. These aren't long songs, and they feed into each other well. It's a pretty tight collection imo. It has plenty of what some have come to hate from Muse, but personally, I strawberry floating love both "sides" of this band (basically pre and post BH&R - but it all started happening in Hullabaloo). I developed an interested in EDM/electronic stuff around the turn of 2009 (after 2 years falling in love with synthesisers), so I guess that just lined up with me.

(Nah the reason I wanted to play a synth was 100% Bliss.)

Went back and listened to 2nd Law, Drones & Simulation Theory. Some decent songs going back, and what the strawberry float is this objectively wrong bollocks that Muse stopped making heavy music?

I'm not sure any of their albums have grown on me this quickly.

You're all wrong, this album kicks ass.

I see.

The new album slaps hard, the Halloween track is fantastic.

Yikes!

My new favourite review.

more heat than light wrote:My new favourite review.

Knoyleo wrote:

Yikes!

strawberry floating hell

Sounds like the ideal video that focuses squarely on "is it good or not, please tell me, I have no opinions" and the worst thing about Muse things ever which is the terrible lyrics. To conclude it's their worst album ever is concluding very little as the same claims have been made over and over again.

I do honestly wish critics would not take music so god damn seriously so far as it were actually possible to enjoy it for whatever it is rather than what it is not. And you can really see when they are enjoying laughing at their own jokes, with reference to the music not being serious or well meaning or eloquent or structured in the proper form. And always constantly referencing other artists, like anybody goes about doing anything without heavily referencing something else, consciously or not (doing so is bad).

It's very easy fishing to criticise and take apart Matt Bellamy's lyrics. He's a musician and a terrible songwriter. Who cares; it's catchy as strawberry float and if there are even a few enjoyable songs the work is done.

The general sentiment that people have to form an opinion on any kind of work immediately (together with the rush to formulate, package and promote those opinions to land a hot take on time), and yet somehow without prejudice (let's face it, the critical overview of a new album is always heavily weighed against it in favour of whatever came before; the pattern exists for all eternity), is insane; and I think it's a disservice to some of the most innovative records of all time (not this one) for people that listen to music with critique set to 100%. Tantamount to having their fingers stuck in their ears with regards to cringe, cheesy, tacky, or whatever. It's like nothing but "serious real music" can be enjoyable, yet with zero express ability to determine what the strawberry float "good, proper music" is even meant to be.
This speaks of the function of critique (although I would barely call that a critique akin to an NME or Kerrang review or whatever), it is processing art, over and above consuming or experiencing it, or even liking it. I have never found Muse's music to be serious, proper rock 'n' roll. What even is that? Rock music is about having a good time, and doing so gratuitously. It's not a strawberry floating GCSE essay.

You also get into really surface level, indeed basic analyses of form, structure and so on. It is incredibly hard to write and produce music, in my opinion almost anything is a triumph when you go through that and understand that. Otherwise, yes, it's a disposable product, and at what cost to the listener? Usually, literally nothing at all.

tl;dr 100% wrong way to enjoy anything (besides perhaps ragging on it, an insufferable activity that bores me to tears).

Edit: The YouTube comments are strawberry floating fantastic, bizarre, amongst the usual armchair criticism

Wholeheartedly agreed with EVERYTHING you said here. I’ve seen Muse twice*, and I love love love ‘The Second Law’ album as well as a few older ones. I streamed this record to decide if I wanted to go to the record store and buy the vinyl - - I heard the first few songs and literally couldn’t believe how gooseberry fool this sounds. I had that same feeling as you - SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT. Please Muse, wake TF up and be better. This. Album. BLOWS.

*wow two whole times but WAIT WHAT that's your point of reference? Paying any attention to people's opinions about music etc these days is about as close to worthless as it's possible to be. I can't think of any worse way to discover and enjoy music based only upon the flippant opinions of whoever can articulate theirs with the least meaningful content. You could randomly interchange references to this or that album or song or comparable work and the general result would be practically the same: oh it's terrible, oh this is pretty good.

I switch off the moment anyone says one word criticisms of something like gooseberry fool, blows, trash, trainwreck etc.

Ok cool but how and or/why do you think that. You're better off saying "yes/no", "recommend/don't recommend" in response to any artistic or literary work.

It literally catapults me back into the school yard discussion things like strawberry floating Pokemon, like this grandiose sense of valuing our own opinions has any impact on the universe. I'd rather spend my time listening to music and, I'm not sure what other words I have to say other than shut the strawberry float up and listen. There is very little I find more boring than talking about something that transcends words and that is literally the entire point of the medium, having its basis in evolution itself.

It's because everything is either good or bad. No in-between or room for nuance in these takes.

Nor do they have time to explain why its bad. It just is. So click like, share and subscribe for more THOUGHT PROVOKING reviews!

I can get on board with it being "not good" because it's objectively "bad", possibly on purpose, but then you'll just get accused of straw manning or moving the goalposts, or indeed lowering the bar. Perhaps the bar should be lower because it's possible to actually enjoy life this way. If nobody can define good music without then consistently applying those rules to produce even more generic, formulaic stuff, therein is revealed the fallacy.

My response to that, I don't give a gooseberry fool. I enjoyed the album and will continue to enjoy it, with more than 1 or 2 songs stuck in my head since the last time I listened to it day of release.

I do think part of it is how disempowering (yet in some ways empowering if you pay little attention to opinions on art, seeing as that may be highly interesting as a discussion but otherwise largely ineffective if not entirely pointless) it is to recognise that we have no power over these artists or their work, so we want to begin to break apart and recreate in their image what we were hoping for, generally with reference to something else, that we never authored either - although we did (arguably) author our response to that.

So I say, chill out and relinquish control, you have an opinion but that in itself is not going to make you any happier or sadder in response to art. You can get embroiled in an emotional response to music that is yet highly logical, or you can just, hit play and get on with your life. It doesn't have to be a 10/10 album.
If you were asked to write down all of your 10/10 albums, I would be impressed if within a couple of minutes you could list 10 in 10 minutes anyway, without constantly disagreeing with yourself, getting into a panic and being miserably stressed about whether you are right or not.

Benzin wrote:It's because everything is either good or bad. No in-between or room for nuance in these takes.

Nor do they have time to explain why its bad. It just is. So click like, share and subscribe for more THOUGHT PROVOKING reviews!

I don't think you can really accuse Anthony Fantano of being clickbaity. He posts hundreds of reviews, many of which are average 5 or 6 out of 10 types. Maybe, just maybe, it's because the album is a bit rubbish?

more heat than light wrote:

Benzin wrote:It's because everything is either good or bad. No in-between or room for nuance in these takes.

Nor do they have time to explain why its bad. It just is. So click like, share and subscribe for more THOUGHT PROVOKING reviews!

I don't think you can really accuse Anthony Fantano of being clickbaity. He posts hundreds of reviews, many of which are average 5 or 6 out of 10 types. Maybe, just maybe, it's because the album is a bit rubbish?

Not watched the video in question but there's enough people on YouTube and others who deliberately go all out in expressing an opinion without actually backing up with any sort of discussion on it.

Was more following on from GG's points on 'critics' overall rather than attacking a video I haven't watched. I don't even think the album is outstanding either (though few albums ever are, there's almost always at least 1 or 2 filler songs which are just crap).

GG, I am so sorry, I will never post another Wallthony Oftexttano review ever again.

Yeah more generally I just go by, it's fairly rare that anything is actually just crap. But "not good", absolutely livid.

I definitely didn't feel that way when I was first listening to Muse.

Anyway, it's GRcade, you can't criticise Muse, or Nintendo, if you do you must be dead inside.

Not a reference.