Review: Muse - The Resistance

I have a Tuesday morning ritual. Well, really I have a ritual for every morning, but Tuesday's are really special for me because new music comes out Tuesday mornings. Some weeks there is just utter crap being released, and others there are interesting little gems. I'm also a bit ridiculous because I try not to look and see when my favorites artists are releasing new albums. I like to be surprise on Tuesday morning with 10 or 15 new tracks and the brooding face of whatever rock star it is that week. It's like Christmas in iTunes!

This week I was surprised to see The Resistance, a new release from Muse, the British progressive rock trio that's been steadily rising in popularity here in the states. I originally found Muse at the same time that I found Travis: I was on a tour of England/Scotland/Wales with my college chamber choir. One day when we were in Bathe, I popped into what looked like an indie record store (could've been a chain store for all I know) and asked the clerk her opinion for the two best rocks bands at that moment. She smiled, turned around and grabbed a copy of Travis' The Man Who and Muse's Showbiz. When I was finally able to listen to both cd's I was in love and subsequently ready to move to London so I could stalk both bands simultaneously.

Since then I've been following both bands, and while Travis has popped out a series of consistent albums, Muse has been a bit shakier on their releases with some being spot on rock releases (Showbiz, Absolution) and others being just off (Origins of Symmetry). In my opinion, the new offering, The Resistance, falls into the "off" category, which is just a bit disappointing after Black Holes and Revelations.

Resistance and Undisclosed Desires stand out as good tracks, and the remainder of the tracks are just ok. Truthfully, there's nothing terrible on this album, just very little of anything stellar. For example, the opening track Uprising is completely standard Muse. Soaring vocals, swelling chord progressions, everything we've heard from them before. Oh, and they've decided to fancy themselves as composers now. The boys have tacked on a three-part symphony to the end of The Resistance called Exogenesis, which could have easily been left off and no one would have missed it.

The thing with progressive and ambient rock is that as an artist you have to try really, really hard to not come off as pretentious snobs. The majority of your music already speaks mostly to a niche market, but if you're lucky and/or talented (and Muse is both), you'll be able to pump out a few mainstream-ish tracks per album so that you can sell records and concert seats. But that doesn't save you from the pretentious fate, and neither do "artistic" efforts like rock symphonies. Don't get me wrong here, rock symphonies can be great when done correctly. Just ask the Moody Blues, or hell even Metallica managed to pull off a set with a symphony backdrop, but a crappy symphony is a crappy symphony… but then add to that the trappings of rock and self-involved rockers, and you have probably created an evil cacophony monster.

Overall, The Resistance is a solid offering, just not a up to the standards we know Muse is capable of. The album isn't very cohesive and the "symphony" at the end throws a whole bunch of random into this mix of tracks. This may even be one instance in which I'd condone by single tracks as compared to the full album… maybe.