A Crazy Musical Fortnight - Part 2 - A Night With Muse

Saturday the 1st of June, I saw Muse at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. They were INCREDIBLE. My write up of it for Stereoboard can be found here, but the unabridged, full fledged version is below.

This band have been on my top-ten-bands-to-see-before-I-die list for rather a while. So when I opened up that envelope with the ticket confirmation email in from my parents at Christmas, I was suitably ecstatic. Regardless of whether you’re a Muse fan or not, you can’t watch a video of them at Glasto or similar doing their thang and not want to be there!

It was a suitably lovely day in terms of weather as well, and that is kind of what makes or breaks a stadium gig in my opinion. The support acts were Bastille and Dizzee Rascal. I’m not a massive fan of Bastille, but went in with an open mind. They were surprisingly good, so fair play to you guys! They played new single “Laura Palmer” really well, and “Flaws” sounded good too. I slightly questioned the judgement of whoever though that booking Dizzee would be a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, I think he's a great performer, but I didn’t know whether it would then compliment Muse. However, I really enjoyed it and he got the crowd going really well. The highlight of his performance was either “Holiday” or seeing the expressions on parents and children’s faces during “Bassline Junkie”.

 

The staging was really cool. There were screens at the side of the stage and also at the back. There were also these strange spikey things hanging over the unused seats, covered in material that was vaguely reminiscent of those morph suits in the video for “Supermassive Black Hole”. They had lights on them, and throughout the show these lit up to co-ordinate with the lights on stage. There were also 4 big massive white blobs on unused seats, and these kind of glowed from the inside, also co-ordinating with the colours on stage at that time. Tucked behind the stage to the right hand side was a giant inflated light bulb too. Curious.

 

There was then a sudden burst of sound, which was “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable”, and on the screen was a woman’s face, narrating the first verse of it. This then launched into “Supremacy” with an extended intro, which set off the concert nicely.

Arguably one of their best songs, “Supermassive Black Hole” was up next. It’s just one of those ones you can’t sit still to! The bass and drums sounded fantastic through the immense speakers, and had everyone stomping and clapping. They then launched into Panic Station, which I hadn’t properly heard before but now LOVE. It’s not their usual style, but it’s a good song nonetheless. On-screen behind the band were various animated versions of famous people, including Barack Obama in a States flag suit, David Cameron with his always-austere face and Paul McCartney looking grey and a bit ill actually. Anyway, these little animated people were dancing along behind Muse, and it was all rather hilarious! This song kind of reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”.

They then played “Bliss” which was another foot stomper with a really great drum beat, and that arpeggic thing they got going on in the background really gets your adrenalin going. “Resistance” was next, and it actually reminded me a bit of that tune they used to play in the old Mario game. Or was it Tetris? But yeah, the bridge of this is just superb, & they performed it with suitable vigour. Everyone sang along with the “It could be wrong, could be wrong” bit.

The screen then changed to this guy's face on it. Like, it was massive. At the start of the song "Animals", it was just there, but he slowly started to smile, and I thihnk it was in slow-mo too. Really sinister. After a while it then changed to him leading a boardroom full of people having a meeting about something. After the meeting, they all start doing the evil laugh, it had  a massively sinister feel to it as well. After that guitar scriggle in the middle, I was thoroughly shocked as I had never seen anything like this before: the actor playing this terrifying guy then came onto the stage! He was followed by a camera that was put straight on the screen, whilst he was angrily trying to get away from it. It was insane! I've never known that happen before, it was really theatrical. At the point in the song where all the shouting occurs over the music, money confetti shot out of guns over the audience, as well as scary man throwing it out at them. As he got to the B-Stage, the camera on the screen changed to one that was somehow attached to the stage. It was on a kind of stand that came over the top, and must have been controlled remotely, but it gave a fantastic effect. At the end of the song, the businessman collapses on the stage (presumably due to a heart attack), all the while still clutching the money. The effect of the camera was great at this point because you really felt like you were on stage with him. 

At the time I didn't quite understand what was happening with all of that, but listening back to the song, I get it now! When the song was fading out, the bassist, Chris Wolstenholme, came on stage with a harmonica, stood over the businessman and played "Man With the Harmonica", which is from the Western film "Once Upon a Time In the West". It then leads into "Knights of Cydonia", what a great move! It fitted perfectly! And because it fitted so well and (to me, at least) was so unexpected, it made it just too hard to stay sat down. Throughout the concert, I'd watched other people in seats like me try and dance and stand up, and be told by staff to stay seated. I can understand this, I mean you don't wanna piss off the people who don't want to stand. But I literally just couldn't help myself! It was so punchy, absolutely fantastic! The people around us eventually stood up too, and by the end everyone was punching the air on "No-one's going to take me alive" and were jumping around on the guitar solo.

This is a good example of what it was like.

They then did a cover of "Dracula Mountain" by Lightning Bolt, which in all honesty I can't remember that well. I think it was a good filler, but listening to the original now... Well I wouldn't listen to it again let's just say. It fit in well the pace of the concert though. They then played "United State of Eurasia", so it was nice to cool things down a bit after that - even if it was only briefly before the end of the song kicked in. They went through "Dead Star" and something they do called "Monty Jam", which is basically Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard jamming away. Bellamy came in on the piano and went into "Feeling Good". The Muse cover of this is definitely the best I've ever heard, and will always be my favourite. It was brilliant; it lived up to how I wanted it to be and more! Such a great version of this track. They went through "Follow Me" and "Liquid State", that weren't particularly memorable again. 

The next song was "Madness", and contained something else I had never seen: the camera zoomed in on Bellamy's face to show that he was wearing glasses, and somehow they were showing a word from the song every so often - but then changing to a different word. Like LCD glasses? It was insane. The other thing that blew my mind about this song in particular was an instrument that Chris Wolstenholme was playing during this song. It was double-guitar shaped, and he wore it over his shoulder, and it had strings, it had some kind of synth board on it [http://muse.mu/images,the-o2-london-26th-27th-october-2012_164.htm?photo=4072] which I have never seen before. 

"Time is Running Out" began with "House of the Rising Sun", which worked really well and fit in. Now, at some point during the conert, there was another businessperson, but this time was a woman. She also had a bit of a storyline, she was working hard throughout her part and putting petrol prices up. At the end, she runs over to the petrol pump on the B-Stage and drinks it, killing herself. The problem is, I can't quite remember which song this was during. I think it was during this song, "Time is Running Out", but I can't be 100% sure. There was then an image on-screen of a roulette board, with the options of "Newborn" and "Stockholm Syndrome", with the ball falling on "Stockholm Syndrome", which was great but I think I would have preferred "Newborn". The song had an outro of Rage Against The Machine's "Freedom", which was a great way to end it.

 

They then moved over to the B-Stage, and played "Unintended", and then "Blackout", which was nice and chilled out. At this point, the purpose of the giant light bulb came to light.. Ha ha... Ahem. It lit up and flew slowly over the crowd somehow, I think there were strings involved, but it was just lovely! Really nice. At the climatic part of the song, and the light bulb had come to a stop just over the middle of the crowd, the bottom of it opened up and a load of confetti fell out. So did a person! [http://muse.mu/images,emirates-stadium-london-saturday-26th-may-2013_173.htm?photo=4210] It was an acrobatic dancer, you know where they dance on the ribbon in the air? Really beautiful. They then went into "Guiding Light" - how fitting! On "Undisclosed Desires", Bellamy went through the crowd, shaking hands with people and hugging them etc. He also took a pair of light-up glasses from one of them, which he then wore for the rest of the song. Whilst on his journey through the crowd, he also went underneath the stage, where there were the businessman and the businesswoman in two coffins. 

They went off-stage for a few seconds, and then "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" played. It's quite a scary song, like people are shouting at you. Add to this a giant robot with steam coming out of its ears and occasionally yelling "UNSUSTAINABLE", and I was basically quaking in my boots. The robot was awesome though, it was easily about 15 feet tall! Apparently his name is Charles. After Charles vacated the stage, they played "Plug In Baby", that old classic. That riff sounded just fantastic in such a large venue. On official London 2012 song, "Survival", we were encouraged by little men on-screen to click our fingers and stamp our feet, which some of us happily obliged to. It was actually quite reminiscent of Queen.

 

For the second encore, "The 2nd Law: Isolated System" was played over the system, with the video running on the screen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXPoJAyeF8k]. It was really interesting, and quite tragic as people get eaten up by this strange graphic that chases them. It was quite an intense atmosphere as everyone was concentrating pretty hard. The concert finished on "Starlight", which is such an uplifting track that it was a great way to end it all off. I would personally have liked to see "Hysteria" too, but it's such a tiny criticism that it's hardly worth mentioning. All in all, a bloody fantastic evening. Thank you Muse. I also want to say: to the two Scottish guys that were sat next to me and my sister, Sean and his dad whose name we didn't catch, you completely just made our evening. It was lovely to meet you both!