FAO Radaghast
Telegraph Review:
At the end, my companion and i just looked at easch other and said nothing, lost for words, renderd speachless bt the extraordinary 90 - minute show we had just witnesses. On the first of two nights at Earlse Court, making the end of more than a year of heavy touring for the Devon band, Muse deliverd one of the most awesome blistering, eye-poping, ear busting rock spectacles I have ever experienced.
They pulverised us with their gut-busting riffery, they dazzeled us with a lighting rig that was seemingly inspired byt the origins of the universe itself, and they bamboozeled us with a arrayof images on a series of video screens strung out across the of the stage. Really, I dont think i have ever seen anything like it.
When i first saw muse last november at Wembley arena, I knew i had seen something very big and very special. But they seem to have spent the intervening perios getting bigger and more special, acquiring more stuff with which to astonish their fans, and honing their skills so that they are now surely the tightest three-piece rock band on the planet.
In frontman Mathew Bellamy they have a heart-rendering singer and a sensational guitarist, his blurry gingers riffing and soloing with both abandon and percision. The bands engine room bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard sound like a band in themselves, chunky, funky, impossibly heavy, locked into each others rhythms with an almost supernatural level of understanding . Put them together, and they make an awesome noise: fierce, spine-tingling, thrilling, catharatic.
Plug In Babby had the whole areana singing along to its chorus of desperation. On Apocalypse Please, they made the end of the world sound like an enthralling proposition. And on New Born, there was a moment thet encapsulated the bands sence of occasion: poised to unleash the songs monumental riff, Bellamy stood at the front of the stage with his right arm aloft, ready to strike, relishing and miliking the drama. His hans quiverd in the air, the crowd cheered, Then the hand came down, and the riff came out and Earls court went bonkers.
At the end all the stops were pulled out. Furious jets of smoke issued from vents in the stage. The lights were a blinding frenzy. The band jumped and whumped. There was nothing for it but to laugh at the sheer glorious over the topness of it all. Muse: nobody does bigness better.