Muse: The Wow! Signal review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week
From Count Dracula organ to choirs crying in Latin, the Devon band are scenery-chewingly preposterous yet nuanced on this epic about extraterrestrial life
Barely three minutes of Muse’s 10th album has elapsed before a choir make an appearance: a choir that isn’t singing so much as chanting in Latin, like something you might hear on the soundtrack to an occult-themed horror film. “Sanctus!” they cry. “Dominus!” And, inevitably, “Lucifer!”
The choir are harder to hear than you might think, battling as they are against everything else that’s going on during The Wow! Signal’s opening track, The Dark Forest: a cantering electronic bassline not a million miles removed from those you used to get on the hi-NRG records that soundtracked mid-80s gay clubs; a string section sawing away as if their lives depended on it; a distorted electric guitar playing frantic prog-metal arpeggios; and frontman Matt Bellamy wildly emoting through a chanson-like vocal melody: “Stars extinguish themselves in fear!” he sings. “We will all beg for extinction!”
It tells you a great deal about Muse that one suspects their fans will greet this as evidence that everything is right in their world once more. They pulled away from a deluge of post-OK Computer artists by the simple expedient of dialling everything up to 11. As their sound became bombastic and melodramatic, the lyrics dealt not in Radiohead-esque existential grumbling but irrational conspiracy theories, luridly drawn dystopias and apocalypticism. They sold millions of records, but as Bellamy recently admitted, the trio’s last two albums were received by critics and followers alike as the sound of a band faltering: 2018’s Simulation Theory attempted to strike out in a new 80s pop-influenced direction, involving collaborations with R&B producer Timbaland and Swedish pop maven Shellback; 2022’s Will of the People was just bizarre, a collection of tracks that knowingly called back to earlier Muse songs, released in lieu of a greatest hits album.
One theory is that Muse wobbled because the world increasingly came around to their way of thinking: luridly drawn dystopian fantasies and irrational conspiracy theories are now thoroughly mainstream. Moreover, it became increasingly apparent that rightwing libertarians were taking some of Muse’s more ripe lyrical fantasias seriously: conservative crank Glenn Beck seemed to believe that 2009’s wake-up-sheeple concept album The Resistance was a prophecy, “dead-on about what’s coming our way”.
It speaks to how overheated things can get in Muse’s world that, lyrically, The Wow! Signal amounts to dialling it down a bit, being concerned primarily with the existence of extraterrestrials (the title refers to a 1977 incident when a radio telescope picked up a mysterious signal apparently emanating from the constellation of Sagittarius) rather than the Thought Police and the Mind Virus. It’s still a pretty ripe old cheese – this is an album on which a duet with Ellie Goulding opens with the words “it’s coming closer – quiet the cobra!” – but perhaps less likely to attract attention from the most dangerous cranks out there, particularly given that it frequently seems to be using the sci-fi stuff as a metaphor for a turbulent love affair.
The music, meanwhile, gleefully updates the florid sound of 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations: amid the hulking riffs, Count Dracula-at-the-keyboard organs, widdly-woo guitar solos, prog-rock synth arpeggios and Bellamy’s vocals – a man never afraid of leaving teeth marks on the scenery – there’s a noticeable pop influence. Clearly Muse have recently spent time in the company of Daft Punk’s Discovery: Nightshift Superstar works a distinct French disco influence into the mix; some of the guitar playing seems to draw from the same well as that on Discovery’s Aerodynamic. If you stripped away all the accompanying sonic folderol and perhaps toned down the lyrics a touch – “all I ever dreamed of has fled to the stars!” – Shimmering Scars could be rendered as a straightforward pop piano ballad, and a great one at that.
Of course, the accompanying sonic folderol is kind of the point. It goes without saying that it can get a bit wearying, that there are moments where all but Muse diehards may feel inclined to press pause and go for a lie down somewhere quiet, or at least somewhere where no one is playing the organ like Count Dracula. But that happens less often than you might expect, perhaps because there’s something oddly prosaic at the heart of The Wow! Signal. Muse write melodically strong songs, capable of withstanding whatever the arrangements throw at them: what sticks with you after In Sickness You and I draws to a close isn’t the flourishes of operatic backing vocals, or its lengthy high-drama synth coda, but its chorus. Or perhaps it’s because there’s something curiously admirable about its commitment to its utterly preposterous bit, its refusal to bow to any notion of maturity or good taste and instead double down in its own world. If you wouldn’t want to live there all time, a visit is never boring.
This week Alexis listened to
Mitchum Yacoub – When I’m With You ft Divina
Beautiful, laidback soul that draws on Latin America (the beat) and Lagos (the Afrobeat horns): perfect for the current climatic conditions.