funky, cinematic and heavy.

What a great surprise. It does so much with so little. Rocks so hard. "Oh yeahhhhhhhh."

Late one night in San Francisco, I was very drunk and battling a Russian woman in 8-ball. She was known to be one of the better players in that bar. I was terrible at pool and am even worse now, but I got lucky that night and happened to beat her on a bank shot. In one of the few unadulterated moments of glory in my life, I recall hearing Muse over the stereo. Despite my inflated sense of mastery, I still managed to come to the very sober conclusion that Muse sucks. All these years later, I have given them another chance. Maybe I was full of it back then? Too ungenerous? This album sounds like Coldplay trying desperately to be Radiohead. It's embarrassing. I'll reserve my generousness of spirit for people making authentic music. On a song-level, whatever ... but Muse amounts to a band that wants to be another band and thinks that by fortifying their unoriginal music with arpeggiated crap, maybe we won't notice that somebody wants to be Thom Yorke. We noticed!