One Day Holiday - Death to Muse-ic

*One day Holiday is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly around music and random stuff
that ranges from the coherent to the absolutely absurd.

I text-ed with someone until the wee hours (God knows who gave that awful name) last week on topics that, so God help me with my memory, began with a stupid psychological test question and ended with blogging. There then, while punching some words on my mobile phone, my only thought was directed towards my former dead blog that, surprisingly, is about music. And so, I obliged the someone that I am no longer blogging because I hated that blog, because some people are reading it. A few minutes later then I realized that I actually have another blog. Well, technically speaking it is not my blog because I'm not maintaining it in terms of appearance and other technical stuff that maintains its' existence. But it is in a way my blog because as far as my eyes can see, I'm the only madman posting steadily here. And quite possibly for absolutely no readership whatsoever. Warts and all. Brilliant.

A few minutes later then I realized that I have not posted anything in this blog for almost two months. Yes, I have not been listening to anything new that much since after Raya. No actually I have been listening to the radio and been delighting in the fact that some of the stuff that the local artists/bands have been producing are simply brilliant. Pesawat for example. I could not get "Rasional Emosional" out of my head. In fact I am humming/mumbling along to that song while I was typing this. And this. And this. And this. Just exquisitely marvelous. Then there is James Baum. Quality stuff that on the first listen, I thought it was some cheap Joey McIntyre imitator from Canada. Komplot, the colorful band that plays disco era music, is another regular repeat features in my brain with that daft, futuristic, stylish, funky disco number whose title I have absolutely no idea. (Oh yes I've just got it. It's called "Enter This Kosmos")

Scientists once said (time frame very vague) that humans can only pay attention to one single thing at time. Like for example, listening. You can't possibly be listening to what song is on the radio while your girlfriend is on the phone. I mean you can microwave your dinner, get undressed, and talking with your mom on the phone, all at the same time. That much is true. But listening takes up a lot of (no, all of) your brain activity that you have to give all of your focus to just one. Which by then I can comfortably announce that I have not listened to anything new from outside this country.

Barring Muse.

I have to say that despite Allmusic being extremely generous with their rating for Muse's last album Blackholes and Revelations, I totally disagreed with it and thought it was absolute rubbish. Yes, "Supermassive Black Hole" was kind of stylish, but the whole album on the contrary is not. Maybe they were trying to be brave and challenging. Radiohead did that with Kid A and they were applauded. And by right they do deserve every single of it. It was one Hell of a brain tumor but I digested it well and it turns out to be a gem. Muse's last album however, feels like a slow train ride at a funfair in Raub. Nobody go to funfair anymore nowadays. It's a well-established fact and because of that you don't feel fun going there, you feel sorry. All that colorful, fancy lighting does not evoke a sense of occasion or celebration, but just pity and solitude empathy. You don't laugh and have a good time going to funfair - you cry.

And that is exactly what Muse has set as a precedent to their latest album, The Resistance. The blueprint, the ground work, the master copy - is all taken from Blackholes, and then amplified a million megawatts, filtered through endless feedbacks to create one stupefying orgy of headache. With this new album, they are no longer going for grandiose guitar wrestle and meticulously complex time signature. They just want to rock - simple, pants-wettingly awesome rock in the same vein as with Queen. Gone are the signature guitar/piano work. This time they are going for the flair, the color, the celebration, the oohs and the aahs, the cannonballs and the explosions - the very key foundation of a funfair. Muse is no longer a guitar band; they are a troupe filled with clowns and ball jugglers, and sword swallowers, and tight-rope walkers and fire eaters. This is Muse with a HUGE sense of occasion.

The good thing about this transformation is that for once, people can stop comparing them with Radiohead. But at least, people take them seriously (as a seriously good guitar band). With the new album out, they are gunning for the ridiculous, over-the-top pompousness. Previous incarnation of Muse is all about filling a whole stadium. This time they want to tear down one. Which in the case of Queen, it works because they are from the onset a ridiculous, over-the-top, pompous, one Hell of a show-off band. And because they have Freddy Mercury. Muse only have Matthew Bellamy and he is, in any shape or form on any given day, is a true guitar wizard. Not a lunatic.