Muse - Simulation Theory

The Guardian 60

(Warner Bros)

Perhaps Matt Bellamy is the greatest thinker of our age. After all, he’s spent much of Muse’s career warning us about technological conspiracies to take over the world. Yes, we thought he’d been spending too much time on the outer edges of YouTube, but he looks a bit less peculiar in the age of Cambridge Analytica. Which, naturally, is the point at which he chose to trail Muse’s eighth album with the most conventional rock-star gripe of all, on Something Human, a partially acoustic, countryish lope about how hard the life of the touring rock star is: “10,000 miles left on the road / 500 hours until I am home / I need something human.” No, Matt! Bring back the drones and the robots and the alien overlords! You can, however, perhaps see why he felt Muse needed a change. After all, there are probably only so many times you can record wildly overblown songs about your pathological dread of the power structures of a future world without wondering whether it’s a fit pastime for an adult. So Simulation Theory comes trailed as Muse’s synthpop album (it’s not), heavily inspired by the 80s (well, in its cover art; less so in much of the music). New producers are on board, among them Shellback and Timbaland, charged with finding a new face to Muse. Which they do, to a certain extent. Propaganda sounds like Muse are trying to be Prince, which isn’t entirely convincing, while Get Up and Fight bolts on a power ballad chorus to an elegantly restrained verse.

But it’s still the less poppy moments that are most exciting: the cascading arpeggios of Blockades, giving way to furious power chords. Or Algorithm, with its none-more-jackbooted synth bass line, urgent strings, and Bellamy emoting about how “algorithms evolve / Push aside / Render us obsolete / This means war.” That’s when you feel yourself seized by an unaccountable desire to march through the streets waving a massive flag, warning your neighbours that the robots are coming to kill us all.

The Guardian 60

(Warner)

A meme circulates among over-privileged western male nerds: that we might all be living in a simulation. Muse’s eighth album title tilts at the notion; tracks called Thought Contagion and Algorithm, meanwhile, reinforce the impression that the Devonian trio continue to play the canaries in our impending apocalypse.

Muse, though, are great at simulations. When they’re not sounding like a dystopian prog opera scored by Jean-Michel Jarre, they can whip out surprisingly sexy machine funk. On their fourth album it was Supermassive Black Hole. Here, it’s a monster called Propaganda, which starts with fart-bass and resolves into Prince’s Kiss. Break It to Me fashions breakbeats out of machine parts and what sounds like a ghostly theremin, while the catchy Pressure has not only an earworm of a riff but Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Terry Crews in the video.

Drowned In Sound 60

Muse’s record sales follow a fairly familiar pattern for the contemporary arena rock act: their late Noughties albums sold millions; their most recent two (2nd Law and Drones) enjoyed high chart positions (Drones was their first US number one) but sold comparatively few actual units. That is download culture for you, and I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Muse – as one of the last generation of rock bands to sell actual records, they are set for life as a live draw (just so long as they remember to play ‘Knights of Cydonia’).

It also means the stakes for a new album are comparatively low. Squint, andSimulation Theory is a light leftfield turn for Muse, but one they can make fairly comfortably, because Black Holes and Revelations-size sales are simply not a realistic prospect anymore. At the same time, it’s hardly a Kid A-stye gauntlet chucked down: fans are not going to freak out when they hear this stuff live.

Simulation Theory, then, sees Muse take the Eighties/Prince inspirations announced fairly flagrantly by ‘Supermassive Blackhole’ et al and finally spin an entire album out of them. And you know… it’s pretty good fun. I have no doubt there are those who will be dismayed by the lack of riffage, but like their heroes Queen, Muse are a hard rock band who don’t actually particularly need to be a hard rock band: their big, tuneful songs stand up just fine sans guitars.

Starting with the jackbooted electro pomp of ‘Algorithm’, proceeding via the heart attack disco of ‘Pressure’, and concluding with the slick, bombastic growl of ‘The Void’, Simulation Theory is a huge, cokey record that fundamentally sounds exactly like Muse, while almost entirely ditching the main instrument associated with them. These are enormous, slick melodies with a seductive retro sheen, and possibly some lyrical guff about being a robot. If anything, the change in palette only partially serves to mask a swerve towards convention: yes, there’s some of the usual paranoid shenanigans, but ‘Something Human’ would appear to be a ballad about how tough touring is, that’s only just salvaged by an enjoyably wonky vocal effect on the chorus; ‘Get Up and Fight’ is a bit of a nadir, a power ballad featuring almost all of the album’s guitar quotient that sounds like it was specifically written to keep synth-phobic American radio stations happy.

Simulation Theory is, on the whole, pretty lightweight, but it’s got a definite elan to it that indicates Muse are still probably having fun doing this: it is considerably better than the sort of here-is-some-product-to-justify-a-tour work that a lot of bands toss off 24 years into their career. Like I say, Muse already have their hits in the bag and could put out pretty much anything now and not dent their festival headline status. Simulation Theory largely sounds like the work of band who have the pressure off and are just going with it – definitely not a bad thing.

Pitchfork 60

On their eighth album, the trio again pivot to the present, using current affairs, pop culture tropes, and contemporary electronics to aim for Spotify omnipotence.