Muse at the O2 Arena
Oh Muse, you skyscraping (literally) three-piece you. My ninth time seeing the band was the first of their two night stay at the O2 Arena in London as they round up the UK leg of The Resistance Tour.
When bands play shows at this level, you expect to see two things in a setlist. You expect to see some form of spontaneity, and you expect to see some form of setlist that is well balanced towards the casuals and the die-hards. Muse provided neither of these last night. Their setlist was incredibly safe and full of crowd pleasers. Whilst we got the odd older cut (the instrumental b-side Nishe and the balladry of Unintended from the band’s first album), the rest were songs that everyone would know, which seemed a bit of a lame move to do. Also, the quartet of Feeling Good, Unintended, Undisclosed Desires, and Starlight absolutely bored me to death, as did the earlier rendition of Guiding Light, easily the worst song off the new album.
Also, one cannot get over the fact that the setlist (albeit a final rehearsal setlist) was actually in the programme for the show (again, a programme?! This isn’t a theatre show!). This absolutely kills any spontaneity that may occur in the set, and it seems like from previous performances on this tour, the band are doing things in a very rigid way. To emphasis my point, three years ago Muse did a similar tour with a similar big-scale set design but with quite a healthy amount of variation.
That said, the band’s performance was great and it was refreshing that despite the rigid setlist nature that they are still excited about playing a show to nearly 20,000 people. Muse’s perfectionist approach to playing live has its benefits as every performance of every song was without flaw. The ’show’ aspect, however much you could argue has overtaken the songs in terms of importance for this tour, were jawdroppingly good. Because the seats at the back were made available, it allowed the band to play to those sections in a piece of showmanship that I’ve not really seen from the band apart from their Royal Albert Hall performance. Also, what’s not to love about rotating drummers?
In front of a crowd that was pretty enthusiastic in the pit and with no real technical problems (the sound at the O2 once again is a thumbs up from me), Muse almost reclaimed their crown of Best Live Band In The Entire Of The World. They just need to loosen up their song selections, which is a shame as it turned a potentially great gig into one that was good but slightly underwhelming at times.
The setlist was:
Uprising
Resistance
New Born
Map Of The Problematique
Supermassive Black Hole
Interlude
Hysteria
Nishe
United States Of Eurasia
Feeling Good
Unintended
Helsinki Jam
Undisclosed Desires
Starlight
Plug In Baby
Time Is Running Out
Unnatural Selection
Exogenesis Symphony Part 1: Overture
Stockholm Syndrome
Knights Of Cydonia
More pictures can be found here. I have a video of Knights Of Cydonia from the pit that will be uploaded tomorrow night and will appear here as soon as possible. In the meantime, here’s Unnatural Selection:
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Posted on November 13th, 2009 by Max
Filed under: Gigs, Reviews
I think I’m on my own with this, but Guiding Light is at least better than Undisclosed Desires. The latter came on the radio earlier, so I stuck OoS on and the contrast is horrible. They’ve really gone to hell as far as I’m concerned. Sold out, in fact. I don’t think they deserve any Radiohead comparisons any more. Flashy lights don’t make up for what looks like a piss-poor set, however well it was performed.
Sad times.
Undisclosed Desires is a lot more interesting than Guiding Light, which is just bog standard straight-to-dullsville power rock.