Muse

Live in concert and larger than life in the Key Arena, Seattle, Washington!

May I begin by saying that there is no way I could do the glory that is Muse justice in this space? Yes? Good, because it's true.

To be honest, before this concert Muse was not one of my favorite bands of all time. I knew then that they were wonderful and that Matthew Bellamy was a beast of a vocalist/guitarist/pianist. Over the course of the evening they have become one of my favorite bands of all time. I also learned that Dominic Howard plays a mean (and monstrous!) drumkit and that Christopher Wolstenholme slaps bass like none other (and is the roaring voice on the track Supermassive Black Hole). Some of their music has, I think, been criticized for its inconsistency as far as pace between tracks goes (not to say that variety is a bad thing, on the contrary, it shows skill, in my mind). I will own that there was a time that I would skip their slower pieces. Ladies and gentlemen, these days are over. Live, they were mind-shatteringly brilliant, and I can't believe it took me this long to realize that every single one of their songs is good because they all have something a little different to offer. It sounds so simple and obvious in text, but it was a quite profound moment.

Of course the insane volume of said concert could have had a hand in that profundity. Good gracious was that joint loud.

Aside from being a fabulous band, they also had a fabulous show visually. Their opening band, Silversun Pickups (who were also fantastic - coincidentally, they opened for Snow Patrol way back when as well) played to a backdrop of three ashen skyscrapers. Their coloring at first had my dad and I thinking they would be pyrotechnic props, aka shoot HUGE COLUMNS OF FLAME. I kindof hoped they would. (Shoutout to my dad for being fabulous and buying tickets, as well as braving the hours and hours of rainy stormy drive to Seattle!) Said purpose of said skyscrapers ended up different but ultimately way cooler.

They were projection screens, at first showing men walking perpetually up and down the stairs inside to the slow march of an interlude, and eventually falling and tumbling down like leaves: and then the fabric dropped. They weren't solid all the way through, and the middle sections vanished to reveal the three members of Muse, each on his own skyscraper. For some reason I didn't see it coming and it was very impressive indeed.

For many of their songs they had sort of movie footage - or simply footage - projected onto what remained of the skyscrapers at various times (they lowered and raised in order to allow the band members to actually take the stage, and the drummer was on a rotating plate, which was very cool). My favorite, I think, was white text that slowly worked its way up the skyscrapers. After a minute or so of that, live footage of the band members was laid into the text, resulting in a sort of white-matrix effect. Also, for some of the songs the lyrics appeared, usually in huge, stark letters. (Like for the apt lyric: "They will not force us, they will stop degrading us, they will not control us, we will be victorious," from their song Uprising.) My only visual criticism was that their first song with lowered platforms had a lazer light show which was epilepsy-inducing. That one was overkill. The rest took it down a notch, thankfully.

But possibly the most unique stage prop they employed were giant eyeballs that they let fall into the crowd. And I mean giant. Taller than a man by at least a foot. At first they just bounced around, and then Bellamy walked through one, popping it with his guitar, and emerging on the other side in a burst of red confetti. Totally unexpected, there. Bellamy then proceeded to pop a few more eyeballs amidst clouds of confetti and then threw his guitar into the platform for the drumkit, sending it spinning across the stage and back into the shadows behind the skyscrapers.

In short, it was an extravaganza. A fabulous, eyeball filled extravaganza.
Also, kudos to Bellamy for being the first rockstar I've ever seen to use a full grand piano in a concert. Perhaps this is not uncommon, but there was something fulfilling in seeing them make the effort (seamlessly, but it was there) to haul a Kawai grand onto Bellamy's skyscraper for a set of only a few songs.

In short, Muse rocks my world. Haven't heard much of their stuff? Go check them out at any of the following!
Official Website
Myspace
The YouTubes
Facebook
Twitter
The United States of Eurasia