![]() ![]() And so the set has, as equal highlights, songs that are more furious and less about the big build - like, late in the show, “Plug In Baby,” in which the riff they keep returning to is really more of a chorus than the chorus, or the pure pop-funk falsetto of “Supermassive Black Hole,” which for once has a hook that teasingly descends, instead of the trademark ascent. Matt Bellamy of Muse at Arena (Chris Willman/Variety)īut, like a good John Wick director, they also know how to construct musical action sequences with a lot of variety to the formula. And then, rinse and repeat, twice! Over the course of a 22-song set like the one in L.A., you keep thinking Muse just shot their wad too early by placing the most dramatically satisfying song in the set too early, then you’re reminded that there are five more just as viscerally exciting coming down the pike, and they still haven’t remotely gotten to actual clock-punching peaks “Starlight” and “Knights of Cydonia.” In that way it’s a little bit like the “John Wick 4” of rock shows. (He’s a guitar hero, too, not incidentally - the 19-second guitar solo in “Madness” sounded even better and more cranked-up than ever.) There is a kind of formula to Muse’s songs - not nearly all of them, but most of ’em that are “hits” - that involves a build from a moody, broody verse to a suspenseful, crescendoing pre-chorus to an explosive peak that is just about as much an aria as rock chorus. ![]() Even if he does have to sing “Madness” - the greatest rock power ballad of the last 25 years - a half-step down from the record, his three-octave range is a marvel to aurally behold, at least if you aren’t holding any long-standing grudges against, like, passion. I’ll come down as unabashedly in favor, especially when it comes to the highly oxygenated emissions of Bellamy, one of the talented male singers the flagging genre still boasts … a Bono who’s got a few Pavarotti genes spliced into his DNA. Speaking of inflatables, anyway, how you feel about hot air generally will probably be indicative of how you feel about Muse specifically. The “Will of the People” Tour (named for the group’s ninth album, which came out in August) has two giant inflatables as its main points of visual interest and grandeur, replacing and doubling up on the giant sinister robot that hovered over the rawk on the “Simulation Theory” tour four years ago. But compared to what almost anyone else is doing who isn’t either a pop superstar or a possible anti-semite, it’s a lot. And they’ve done less, too, although only on fleeting, promotional occasions, like the bare-bones mini-tour that had them visiting the nearby Wiltern for an album-launch underplay last October. (Or putting a Star of David on a pig.)īut why spend too much looking around at crowd demographics when Bellamy and company are giving you so much to look at on stage? They’ve actually done more elaborate staging there were no drones this time. There were kids, or relative kids, too, but a lot of them in the company of dads who wanted to show them what rock shows used to be like, and were probably happy to be able to take them to one where the main guy on stage wasn’t pushing or surpassing 80. ![]() But the two primary generations were, first, the folks that grew up on KROQ as kids in the last real glory days of alt-rock in the ’90s and 2000s, and then, secondarily, the sub-generation before that, a little older than 44-year-old Bellamy, even, who recognize Muse as probably the last great link in a chain that goes back to the classic rock, or pomp-rock, of the 1970s. Looking around at the full house at Stap-… er, Crypto, you would definitely say the audience counted as intergenerational, by any measure.
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