Acoustic Dreams &
Hardcore Screams

If you’re not yet personally familiar with a live Muse show (and why not?) you can expect it to be a huge visual spectacle with a massive sound that clouts your ears hard and electrifies your whole sensual capacity. No, I’m not overdoing the description, it’s entirely expected now and always fulfilled. Being a bit of a Muse veteran; I can entirely vouch for the fact they are one of the best bands to see ever in the history of ever.

Wembley stadium is a beast of a venue that Muse somehow manages to dwarf with their music. From the moment they entered the stage and launched into ‘Uprising’; Matt Bellamy was a force to be reckoned with as he hammered out everything he had with his guitar and filled the whole venue with both the heavy and the sublime. No one can argue that he took the centre stage as Dom (drums) and Chris (bass, backing vocals) stayed as fairly background characters but still generated a powerful collective sound that you’d be hard pressed to challenge. Bellamy spent the duration of the show prancing from one side of the stage to another as well as descending down the central runway, pushing the crowd’s energy off of the hyperactivity Richter scale as he went.

The stage set-up deserves a mention in itself. For a place so big, its appearance had to be larger than life; the effects had to be impressive. We were faced with pyramid shaped staging with each top segment being an individual screen that moved from VT montages to portraits of each Muse member as they played. At the peak of the pyramid was an orb that displayed a creepy close-up of a moving eye for much of the show. For those who have been to a Muse stadium show before, you may remember the large spheres hoisted up behind the stage and scattered around the vacant seats, they were there again too and flashed in concordance to the spectacular light show that accompanied Muse’s epic set list.

For a night this big; the set list was inevitably big too. So without a play by play dissection, here were the best bits:

• 'Supermassive Black Hole' - this is one of the sexiest songs ever to be written and hearing it ring out in front of you makes it sound ten times more full of raunch.
• Ever the lovers of the extra-terrestrial - Muse whipped out a huge inflatable spaceship during the encore which was pulled manually round the circumference of the standing area as a troop of security men dashed beside the puller to clear people out of the way. Then what happened? Oh, you know, a female acrobat tumbled out from inside of it halfway round, spraying glitter everywhere and twirling and swirling as it continued its orbit. Amazing.
• The anthemic cover of 'Feeling Good' was sung loud and true by every one in the stadium. If ever there were lyrics that spoke of hope for new beginnings it was these and it felt oh-so-good to sing them with thousands of others in unison.
• The relatively unexpected old favourites 'Bliss' and 'Citizen Erased'.
• The whole night was a perfect mixture of Muse's discography. From their current album The Resistance; they gave us 'United States of Eurasia' which was simply made to be played to an audience with its subtle piano intro growing to its euphoric melody and dramatic chants.
• The moment when Dom and Chris got a chance to come to the forefront on the mini platform and be risen up whilst they performed an instrumental together before, eventually, being re-joined by Bellamy.

The two encores of the night made the entire show for me. ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, ‘Plug In Baby’ and ‘Knights of Cydonia’ all in quick succession? Absolutely magical. Three of the biggest Muse tracks played out on stage was completely priceless to even the kind-of fans. Not to mention the out-of-this-world light suit that Bellamy wore to return to the stage for the second encore to sing ‘Take A Bow’. He was smothered in flashing red lights and donned some super-stylish sunglasses adorned with clashing blue ones.

It's displays such as this that make you realise how far this band have come. Go back a few years and they were just as talented and still delivering the big guns song-wise; but they were playing "normal" venues and putting their music across with smaller gestures. Now you've got Bellamy doing his thing like a flashing human lightbulb as UFOs descend and drummers and bassists take off on moving platforms. You can't doubt that a display so full of grandeur only mirrors the grandeur of their music. Big, loud, beautiful.

Is it possible they could possibly get ANY bigger? Let's wait and see.

Set list for the night
Uprising
Supermassive Black Hole
MK Ultra
Map of the Problematique
Bliss
Guiding Light
Hysteria Interlude
Citizen Erased
Nishe
United States Of Eurasia
Ruled by Secrecy
Feeling Good (Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley cover)
MK Jam
Undisclosed Desires
Resistance
Starlight
Time Is Running Out w/ House of the Rising Sun intro
Unnatural Selection

Encore
Exogenesis: Symphony, Part 1: Overture
Stockholm Syndrome

Encore 2
Take A Bow
Plug In Baby