V Festival Hylands Park review (NME article)
Reviewer: Mark Beaumont
An injured little finger (The White Stripes, Carling Weekend 2003). A chronic case of premature balding (The Darkness, various US gigs, 2004). A slight lack of tread on the wheels of his private jet (Morrissey, Benicassim, 2004). Anything from meningitis to a chesty grandmother has been enough reason for artists to pull out of major festival dates over the past year, and what a despicable bunch of part-timers Muse prove them all to be tonight. They’ve suffered the trauma of drummer Dom’s father’s death backstage after their triumphant Glastonbury date, and the broken wrist of bassist Chris Wolstenholme and they still show up to turn Chelmsford into a ring of Saturn by riff power alone. Shame on you, Thirteen Senses. Wherever you are. So, after Dido’s thwarted attempt to hypnotise an entire festival into a vegetative state through the power of slap bass, how come such a debilitated Muse are still the greatest rock band on this or any other planet today? Is it the way that Matt Bellamy hunches over his Close Encounters of the Third Kind keyboard like a mad scientist concocting formulae of molten scree during ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’? Is it the way their awesome space melodies crash land into their volcanic bass eruptions (supplied by the bassist from The Streets as Chris is relegated to Big Balloon Throwing duties) to make a noise like an End of Days ecological disaster in progress? Is it the way in which the Mercury Prize panel, when faced with what is undeniably the best British album of 2003, don’t know their ‘Apocalypse…’ from their elbow? Or is it the fact that ‘Plug in Baby’, ‘Hysteria’, ‘Time is Running Out’ and ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ all have the dark thrill of an art-house car-chase suddenly hitting Warp Speed Five? Whatever, this summer Muse have cemented their position as the most inventive, visceral and out-of-this-world rock band in existence. And no conviction for possession of an offensive weapon would stop them now.