Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Who is really controlling who? That may as well be the burning question as Muse release their latest album, Drones, onto Britain’s music lovers’ ears. A question that gets murkier day by day, that gets lost in the very society which at times is preoccupied with being shown the way rather than living it and making their own mistakes, to err is after all Human, to do nothing is be an echo of one’s former self, the whisper of a murmur wrapped in a drone.
Drones is the seventh album by the band and the relentless feeling of unique possibility that was lost, almost abandoned with hope clinging by its fingernails to the side as the ship fell to the waves of the average and mediocre in The 2nd Law, has been resurrected and refloated; the cargo still perhaps surprisingly intact and the beautiful hum of well oiled machine resonating with vigour.
Whilst the band will never arguably top the scale of music insatiability and fire that they reached during The Resistance, Drones perhaps should be seen as placing the band into an era of more relaxed maturity, of being seen for that they can achieve in the studio and live in whichever arena comes their way, rather than the accessibility to pomp and striding through the Rock genre as giants.
That’s not to say the giant isn’t there but in this latest album, it is to be seen, heard and toyed with but it never once strays into the unbelievable, it is not mythic or legend like, it is just straight forward and honest, with just that sparkle of elegance that makes Muse one of the best acts of the 21st Century.
Tracks such as Psycho, the truly tremendous Reapers, Defector and The Globalist add weight to the back catalogue, already overflowing out of its casket and spilling onto the floor. This act of musical carnage, of notes that seem impossibly high, of guitars that pound away at the unfeeling and robot like are at least so beautiful that a machine, an unblinking automaton may copy them but will never have the enormity attached to them in what human fingers and knowledge can bring to the listener’s ears.
The rollercoaster ride that has seen number one album after number one album will surely continue, for the almost unique has no equal in their field.
Whisper it you must but Drones is a wonderful return to form after the huge dip in The 2nd Law, an album that offers an amendment to the past.
Ian D. Hall