Muse delivers the neo-classic rock goods at LA’s Crypto.com Arena – Variety

Chris Willman/Variety

Muse was making its eighth visit to downtown LA’s Crypto.com Arena, frontman Matt Bellamy reminded the crowd, shortly into the trio’s return engagement Thursday night — except instead of calling it by its current name, he said the venue would always be Staples Center to the band. He added a joking, mumbled reference to “weird fucking scammers,” presumably a reference to his lack of faith in the state of cryptocurrency. Digital assets are fleeting, but office supplies are eternal, right? There is a sort of loose analog there — no pun intended — to the situation with Muse, who forever use futuristic imagery in their shows but reign as one of rock’s best bands by being rooted in a slightly pre-digital past.

Or past, plural. Looking around at the full house at Stap—… er, Crypto, you’d definitely say that the crowd counts as intergenerational, by any measure. But the two primary generations were, first, the folks who grew up on KROQ as kids in the last real glory days of alt-rock in the 90s and 2000s, and then, secondarily, the subgeneration before that, slightly older than 44-year-old Bellamy, even, which recognizes Muse as probably the last great link in a chain going back to the classic rock, or pomp rock, of the 1970s. There were kids, or relatives, too, but many of them in the company of dads who wanted to show them what rock shows used to be like, and who were probably happy to take them to one where the main man on stage wasn’t pushing or surpass 80. (Or putting a Star of David on a pig.)

But why spend too much looking around at audience demographics when Bellamy and company give you so much to look at on stage? They have actually done more elaborate staging; there were no drones this time. And they’ve done less, too, even if they’ve only been fleeting, promotional occasions, like the bare-bones mini-tour that saw them visit the nearby Wiltern for an album launch encore last October. But compared to what almost everyone else is doing who is neither a pop superstar nor a possible antisemite, it’s a lot. The “Will of the People” tour (named after the group’s ninth album, which came out in August) features two giant inflatables as its main points of visual interest and grandeur, replacing and doubling up on the giant creepy robot that hovered over the rawk. on the “Simulation Theory” tour four years ago. Speaking of inflatables, anyway, how you feel about hot air in general is likely to be indicative of how you feel about Muse specifically.

I will come down as immodest especially when it comes to the highly oxygenated emissions of Bellamy, one of the most talented male singers the flagship genre can still boast… a Bono who has some Pavarotti genes spliced ​​into his DNA . Even if he has to sing “Madness” — the biggest rock power ballad of the last 25 years — half a step down from the record, his three-octave range is a marvel to behold, at least if you’re not. bears a lingering grudge against, like passion. (He’s also a guitar hero, not coincidentally – the 19-second guitar solo in “Madness” sounded even better and more pumped up than ever.) There’s a kind of formula to Muse’s songs – not nearly all of them, but most of them that are “hits” – involving a build from a moody, grumbling verse to an exciting, crescendoing pre-chorus to an explosive climax that’s about as much an aria as a rock chorus. And then, rinse and repeat, twice! Over the course of a 22-song set like that in LA, you keep thinking Muse just shot the tab too early by placing the most dramatically satisfying song in the set too early, then you’re reminded that there are five more just as viscerally exciting coming down the pike, and they still don’t have far to go actual ringing peaks “Starlight” and “Knights of Cydonia”. In that way, it’s a bit like the “John Wick 4” of rock shows.

But, like a good John Wick director, they also know how to construct musical action sequences with lots of variation in the formula. And then, as equal highlights, the set has songs that are more furious and less about the big construction – like late in the show “Plug In Baby”, where the riff they keep returning to is really more of a chorus than the chorus, or the pure pop -the funk falsetto of “Supermassive Black Hole,” which for once has a hook that teasingly descends, instead of that trademark climb. Different dynamics ensure that the musical martial arts do not plateau at a constant high point. One of these built-in breaks is an all-instrumental alternate version of “The Dark Side”, performed by auxiliary member Dan Lancaster on slide guitar as a very David Gilmour-esque mood piece, instead of the less satisfying, hyper-pop vocal version which existed on the primary issue of 2018’s “Simulation Theory.” (Lancaster did a pretty good job of keeping his composure, as not too many minutes after this guitar display, Bellamy would cede the stage once again to his sidekick—not for another instrumental, but so that Lancaster could propose to his girlfriend. said yes.)

Some FX-filled videos also provided a break in the action while adding to the pomp and circumstance of it all, which offered some conceptual continuity to the concert, and offered visual teases of the giant props to come. The first of these segments featured a rebel in a mask of mirrors being struck down by a towering, strangely uniformed, horned figure representing the man. A few songs into the show, the face of the mirror-masked man appeared behind the band like the first giant inflatable of the night, his head moving slightly to the right or left. When it came time for the encore, he was replaced by his evil nemesis, the possibly “Fantasia”-inspired, horned authoritarian guy, with giant gloved hands outstretched on either side of the massive stage. Did his eyes glow in the dark at opportune moments? Of course they did. It was without a doubt incredibly cheesy. But you might not think so if you’re an Iron Maiden fan, and seeing this gigantic guy appear on stage is as natural as seeing Eddie in your nightly dreams.

Accepting something as goofy as these giant inflatables means accepting Bellamy as a bit of a contradiction in terms at times. He’s the guy who can flesh out the intricacies of shifting global politics, who also isn’t ashamed of 80’s horror movies and video games. (On this tour, they perform the recent song “You Make Me Feel Like Halloween,” a tribute to John Carpenter and Stephen King, preceded by Bellamy sitting at an organ to belt out “Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” a piece so associated with old horror films it can only count as comedy anymore.) And he is the one who narrated Variety last year that, left to his own devices, he might write beautiful music in more of an Enya vein, but loves Rage Against the Machine so much you can’t believe Muse’s headbanging side isn’t his first and last love. If you’re going to love any part of what Muse do, you kind of take it all—the sense of life-and-death importance implicit in most of their best songs, and the old-school showmanship that comes with it. It’s easier to take the whole shebang, of course, if you have some nostalgia for giant puppets of teachers who won’t leave the kids alone and that sort of thing, and don’t mind seeing the theatricality translated into the present.

But for all the videos and balloons, Muse’s is more of a simple rock show than the visuals would lead you to believe. I caught their promo show at the Wiltern last fall, the one with no props or special effects, just a heavy emphasis on their most aggro songs – and didn’t think this return to their normal full-size output would be as satisfying. Indeed, even the presence of a ramp meant Bellamy spent less time standing anywhere near the band’s great bassist, Christopher Tony Wolstenholme, or the phenomenal drummer, Dominic Howard, as a visual power trio than usual. In some ways, despite the elaborate lighting and rigging, it felt like a throwback to the 70s arena shows that predated the onset of massive props and effects.

One of the most ironic things about it was how many of the bells and whistles in the show were downright primitive things that have historically pleased audiences. Very, very early in the show, long, colorful streamers was released. When was the last time you saw streamers at a concert? A few songs later there was confetti. When was the last time you saw confetti? Well, probably a lot more recently than the streamers, though still. And from there the band moved on to … a snow effect. No wonder Bellamy prefers to keep calling the place Staples Center instead of Crypto: As digitally minded and forward-thinking as a guy who spends part of the evening dressed in a suit with LED lights can be, he’s keeping alive the best aspects of the era of paper products.