Melody Maker 2000-06 – Muse at Pyramids Portsmouth
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A review of the Pyramid Centre concert in the 2000-06 issue of Melody Maker magazine.
Muse at Pyramids Portsmouth
The thing about true stars is this - everyone wants them. People attribute their overwhelming feelings of excitement in true stars presence to an extreme case of the horn, understandably enough. But not so. What they do, these beings, is blast a hole in the atmosphere you share with them, and then fill it with something of themselves, an infinite and fabulous thing in colours and dimensions you've never dreamed of.
The fizz in your confused cells is your desire to jump into that place, to inhale the parts of you they've stolen, to both be inside them and be them. You share their space, reaffirming yourself in the world and yet negating yourself into a howling, subservient scrap. That's why you think it's sexy - The thrill of existence fused with the fear of becoming void - but it's way beyond that now. Forget the huge praise, those bulbous snipes, the faint-inducing corsets of weary comparison - Muse are way beyond all that. They've blossomed, and blow a hole in your heart.
The crowd are charged and roaring, and the one-in-several-billion incongruity that is Matt Bellamy welcomes them like Errol Flynn. "Helloooo!" he woofs jovially. "We're called Meeeuuuuse, and it's true, we're from England!" And off he flies into the first untitled newie, taking us with him. The new songs -God, they're heavy. Where the familiar ones are sometimes ponderous, sometimes anguished, things you can just about pin down, the new ones go so high and so far that they've made their own world. They're the sort of metal you can taste like the blood from a missing tooth, "Ashemed" a grotty biker-riff wreathed in the scissoring white noise of Matt's guitar, elevated info something almost medieval in its ferocity.
But all the songs have you scrabbling and gaping, because Matt's voice - Jesus (and Matt's guitar - Christ) - he conspires with it, caresses its every inch, kills it a thousand glorious ways.
On 'Falling Down', it's old-blues-singer hoarse, on 'Cave' a bastard-big backdraft, on 'Sunburn' a ghostly tingle - it's stark as death and full as life. You trust matt's voice even as you're slain by it, an otherworldly creature that whirls your insides to its frequency. Just as you're thinking how timeless this feels, like it's etched in something that's always been here, they lean forward into veteran soul chanteuse Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good', and it's so fabulousy weighty you want to fall on it
They leave with Dom tumbling his kit forwards, Matt jumping like a child on his guitar, howling his -our- all into the mic. Nothing can touch them now. They've reached the perfect point of balance, fused everything together and squeezed us in with them as the doors are closing, and now that we're in, we need no one else. Distilled paranoia equals heightened awarness equals insane pleasure. The void is this way.
[ setlist ]
untitled new song
uno
sober
sunburn
falling down
untitled new song
untitled new song
feeling good
agitated
cave
ashemed
muscle museum
filip
plug in baby
-------------
unintended
minimum
showbiz
Sarah Bee
Matt about the gig: "We played pretty rusty, but the vibe was good. The crowd were good, they were up for it, they were up for dome rock, which was good to see. The most rocking moment was a song we hadn't played before - 'Ashemed', it's a B-Side from the last single. it was a bit of a gamble. It was a bit messy, I just had something at the end rrrarr! F***ing hel! I just had to f***cking let it out!!"