Everyone deserves an equal opportunity and these days we all can! Not just on a pay scale or employment wise, but for almost everything. Gone are the days when hecklerspray writer Kris Silver got funny looks for wearing ladies clothing in public. Now he is welcomed by society and not cast aside like an unwanted puppy at Christmas.
However, with bands such as Coldplay and U2, you rarely hear from anyone else who isn't the lead singer. Chris Martin and Bono use their elevated platform to harp on about free trade and saving the world the poverty, all whilst being tax exiles.
Third rate indie rockers Muse suffer from the same syndrome and have to deal with Matt Bellamy taking all the glory. Sadly, he's all loved up with Kate Hudson, so in a rare opportunity to speak out, members Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenhome have spoken of their desire to move the band into a soft rock direction. Rock and roll mightn?t be the word.
Soft rock usually gives off all sorts of disgusting sounds; imagine the audio of two girls one cup but taken to the next level. People like Snow Patrol, Van Morrison and The Eagles come to mind when we think of soft rock. Basically, it's music for your dad who still wants to remain cool and thinks that the music of his youth is still popular. He?ll read the copy of Vice magazine that’s been left around by their plebbish offspring and then make awkward conversation at the dinner table about a German leather enthusiast who makes his own bondage equipment. All whilst wearing purple skinny jeans.
Muse have always been one of those bands that we don't really understand. Some of their songs such Glade Plug-In Baby and Super Big Massive Brown Hole weren't that bad, though we prefer to watch them muted and watch the videos which are better than generic promos of standing against a supermarket wall looking moody. This model has strangely worked and the band have amassed a huge following of fans and have even bagged the headline slot of hipster festival Reading and Leeds. Let out of their Muse shackles, the other band members who we've forgotten about already said:
?Fans might want to prepare for a big shift in the band?s sound on their next album. The drummer and bassist said that Muse?s next full-length release will likely come out in 2012. It might be softer rock, but then it's up to me and Chris to make it heavy again. A heavy rock lullaby! But I'm sure it will move forward in some way.?
A rock lullaby? That's the sort of novelty that appears in Britain?s Got Talent, a show where people stick two opposing ideas together and combine them to form something that's more annoying than original. Cats on trampolines are just one of the wacky acts featured by the population who get excited when they hear the chimes of an ice-cream truck. But with the impending birth of Matt Bellamy?s child, fans of Muse should prepare themselves for weird versions of three blind mice and a lyrical version of Jack and the beanstalk when a new album is released.
If fans of Muse aren't happy of this potential change of direction, they could always go and listen to Radiohead. The band Muse badly fail at emulating.
Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!
tom says
matt bellamy is a legend…. leave him alone(kate hudson is a nice lady)….. dom and chris are as awesome as him too. . in muse all are equal. so fuck off with your slating off of muse…… from tom the MUSE MANIAC
blodwin says
I looked at this thinking i’d read some genuine news about the new muse album, but instead i found some biast wanker who clearly knows nothing about the band apart from what he read in the NME over the last few days. Muse are one of the biggest bands in the country, not ‘third rate’, and if you can’t acknowledge that then your nothing more than another musical snob waste of space.
Tom says
Brilliant work as always, Hecklerspray. :)
Cathal Barry says
What an outrageous attitude the writer has here. Jealousy, I reckon, can be the only explanation. Muse have just finished a World Tour having sold out all events totaling approx 2-3 million viewers. They are one of the biggest bands in the world and have a lot in them yet. Matt Bellamy is one of the most talented, well rounded musicians anywhere ever. A third rate band? Please, if you don’t like them don’t write about them. Simple as.
Randy says
My God! When will it end. I hardly expect the Hecklerspray bunch to jump on board the growing and forward plunging Muse bandwagon, but, sheesh, are there any clear heads among you. It seems as though your crew thinks it hip to bash Muse, and this I don’t get, especially when most of the world recognizes them as a talented and innovative band, who, by the way, have paid their dues and are finally getting the respect and attention they deserve.
I won’t even comment on your subtle insinuation that there’s dissention in the group or how you mock the song names and videos. We all know that
Dale says
yh, but you’re a cunt (just thought id let you know)
My, oh my says
My dead dog has more talent Muse, and Matt BLAHmey forgot to stop at half retard and went straight to full retard years ago. Hack band that sounds like a cat getting nuked.
SewerUrchin says
Oh boo bloody hoo, someone dislikes a band that you happen to think about while masturbating. As long as you like Muse, why do you give a shit what anyone else thinks?
Also, this was obviously aimed at the whine* who congregated last time to complain about someone dissing their heroes because they’re ludicrously easy to wind up. I’d love to know how many members of said whine have never, ever criticised another band or artist in their lives, in all honesty.
For what it’s worth, I’m indifferent to Muse. They’ve got a couple of OK-ish songs and are fairly inoffensive, but I’ve never thought “Wow, I really want to listen to Muse right now”. I agree with the sentiment that they’re essentially Radiohead Lite.
*”Whine” is now also a collective term for barely-literate fans of bands who throw their toys out of the pram as soon as someone has a bad word to say about them.
Cookie Monster says
After all this talk about Muse here at the Hecklersplat, Mrs Cookie and I decided to have a listen to some of their noise. We gave it a few tries, and honest, well-intentioned tries at that. I’m sorry, Muse fans, but it’s not great music. It’s, at best, passable. It sounds like the stuff that Thom Yorke may have written when he was about twelve years old, and perhaps smoking his first joint (though his buddies filled it with parsley and laughed their asses off as he prattled on about the universe, his bunghole, and other nonsense). Some tracks are amazing in that they sound much like shit smells, but I’m not sure that that provides the qualifications that are required to maintain the level of self-indulgent naval gazing and smug entitlement that these guys, and their clueless fans, maintain.
So, to each their own. Love Muse if that’s your thing, hate them if it amuses you, or give it all a good heartfelt “Meh”. Just be aware that if you idolize this band, you are branding yourself as “a bit thick in the area of musical taste”, but what’s idolization without a heaping of willful blindness, eh?
Mark says
It’s always obvious when someone (in this case Mr. Laidlow and a few of the authors of the comments posted here) has little base on which to criticize a band when they mention so little and omit the obvious. It is obvious that neither Mr. Laidlow nor a few people here have heard anything from Muse other than their latest album, or latest two at most. It is better to form your own opinions than to jump in the thought-bandwagon of a few…
Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and of course tastes in music will always differ…but I’ve never understood the comparison to the brilliant Radiohead. To say that Muse is Radiohead-Lite is ignorant in the most literal sense of the word. If you listen to Showbiz, Origin of Symmetry and Absolution, especially their heavier numbers and still think they are Radiohead wannabes then maybe we’ve been listening to a different Radiohead altogether.
Radiohead are in a league of their own, but please do listen to Muse’s earlier albums and heavier more complex songs before coming to a conclusion let alone bashing them idiotically in forums.
Randy says
While I disagree completely, Mr. Monster, I did very much enjoy your post. Very clever.
Cookie Monster says
“Jealousy, I reckon, can be the only explanation”
Your reckon is broken. There are many other explanations. Currently, the widely accepted explanation is that Muse may be a bit dungish on a good day.
“Matt Bellamy is one of the most talented, well rounded musicians anywhere ever”
That statement speaks volumes. However, I might rephrase it thus, “If Matt Bellamy gained fifty pounds – in an effort to shrug the faux starving musician chique – he would be a, well, rounded entertainer.”
This is all that I need to know about the man: http://hempnews.tv/2010/12/04/muse-frontman-matt-bellamy-plans-hemp-farming-future/
What an utterly fantastic pile of twat…
Cookie Monster says
I agree. Muse’s earlier, heavy, and more complex recordings sound nothing like later, and brilliant, Radiohead recordings. Rather, Muse’s earlier, heavy, and more complex songs sound like Radiohead’s earlier, and brilliant, recordings.
I’m afraid that I do have to question your use of the phrase “ignorant in the most literal sense of the word”. You see, “literal” is quite absolute; there is not such a thing as “A wee bit literal, but mostly figurative” just as blurting “In the less figurative sense of the word” identifies you as a bit dense. Then again, I’m a habitual eater of mostly literal cookies, so what do I know?
Steve says
This goes to show how ignorant Matthew Laidlow is of Muse. Dom has always been in the spotlight with Matt. He and Matt are the two main figureheads, while Chris has opted to take a backseat in favor of concentrating on his family life. Even then, he is chummy with his band mates. They have been friends for years, afterall. So he’ll occasionally appear in an interview with one or both of the other two, and he’ll be photographed while having fun with Matt and Dom while on the road between shows.
Matt and Dom do so many interviews together, though. That you are unaware of this shows how much you actually know about how the band operates.
And all of this like-comparison between Radiohead and Muse shows how incapable music writers like Laidlow are in recognizing the differences between bands. Other than the fact that each has a prog rock background, and the two lead singers have basically the same vocal range and use of falsetto, there’s differences. Muse focuses more on post-apocalyptic themes and its music (especially before this recent album) is normally dense in texture. This isn’t to say Radiohead has not written post-apocalyptic songs or doesn’t have any texturally dense songs, nor that Muse doesn’t break its own mold at times, but anyone who uses more than a couple braincells can make some distinction between the two bands when it comes to their tendencies. Radiohead’s texture is simply more sparse than Muse’s. And this gives each its own positive qualities.
Alas, Laidlow goes to show he can’t write with an unbiased hand nor actually fact-checks or familiarizes himself with the material. Thanks for writing this article so I know to skip over hecklerspray when it comes up on Google’s news feeds in the future.
Mark says
You’re absolutely right. I stand corrected. You are being “ignorant”…period.
Cookie Monster says
You didn’t need to use quotes there.
We do seem to be agreeing an awful lot. We must be two very nice fellows, at least for a Monster and a Mark.
I am going to chalk the whole thing up to every rock band in the world wanting to be Led Zeppelin, whoops, I mean being influenced by Led Zeppelin. That is a snarky (my only capability) way of wondering if, as has been wondered many times by many people who know much more about things than I, rock peaked in the 70’s.
Perhaps I’m simply getting old, but when I think of the giants of the 60’s and 70’s, I find everything that modern rock has (sans Pro Tools, mind). Take Yes, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Zeppelin, The Who, and the others… everything that is, was there. Of course, they took blues, added advanced music theory (classical), and ran it through the blender of more advanced electronics (vacuum tubes and four-tracks were advanced, in their day) to end-up with what they did. My tin ear hears a tremendous jump from the 50’s to 70’s, but detects nothing similar in rock from the 70’s to now.
Muse is solid at what they do, but what they do is nothing new. Radiohead is very good at what they do, but they too aren’t this generation’s Monteray Music Festival or Woodstock headliner. Comparing the two groups is like arguing over the relative qualities of extant varieties of apples; good for a laugh at the expense of those who are sensitive about their taste in apples, and no more than that. The case here is that Muse fans are awfully quick to bite-in, much to the apparent amusement of Hecklerscrunch scribes and readers, and so on it goes. You could say that ignorance of oranges is bliss.
Here’s a link things started:
http://www.allaboutapples.com/varieties/
Swordfish says
Another pathetic hater. Third rate band – really? You may not like their music but please stay true to the facts. They are officially best British live band of the decade. Radiohead is OK but these comparisons are obsolete.
Cookie Monster says
What? Like, really. What? Pull your pants up, you fruity fucking fish. “Best British live band of the decade”, are you totally crackers? I just did a Google, and here are the first few hits:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/page/0,10607,1053432,00.html
– Note Beth Gibbons; with Portishead, she has a larger cock than Muse can collectively muster (and I mean “cock” in the figurative sense, before you go using Google to find monstrous clitorises)
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/music/4138154
– Oh, this is where you live; amazing, a Coldplay/Radiohead/Muse argument
http://www.nme.com/list/the-top-100-greatest-albums-of-the-decade/158049/page/10
– It’s like, Muse, like, doesn’t, like, exist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westlife
– This is a first-rate (by someone’s standards) group
Let me guide you through this…
One; Muse is not nearly as good as you think they are, and you will realize this once you learn how to pull your pants up above your crack
Two; is the same as One, but with your pants pulled-up
Three; the part of the world that is somewhat smart can identify you by either your taste in music or your taste in boxer shorts (both of which are quite exposed as being a bit shitty)