Showbiz - Muse

...the 4th of October 1999, Showbiz by Muse, the debut album from one of the biggest bands on the British rock scene today, is quite simply something which every household should own. In the same sense that everyone should have a toilet and an oven, everyone should have this CD. It is a raw, fresh sound which reeks of the attitude Muse had in their younger days, petulant in some places and powerful in others, and is one of the bravest debut albums ever ...
...could produce a song like Showbiz on their debut album, knowing that this would be what people had to take their first impressions from. It is a soaring piece, with very few different lines, and just listening to Matt as he repeats lines you can imagine him staring you in the face and singing through gritted teeth as if he really is angry and hurt. This song has a darker sound to it than any other, and the way it builds from start to end is a credit ... more

Released on the 4th of October 1999, Showbiz by Muse, the debut album from one of the biggest bands on the British rock scene today, is quite simply something which every household should own. In the same sense that everyone should have a toilet and an oven, everyone should have this CD. It is a raw, fresh sound which reeks of the attitude Muse had in their younger days, petulant in some places and powerful in others, and is one of the bravest debut albums ever made and unlike many, still at least holds it’s own against their more recent works and anything that leading competitors can produce. It is a collection of twelve songs which, unlike many albums, doesn’t take any time to get going or fade away at the end, rather it delivers pure quality throughout.
It should be mentioned at this point that this is my favourite album of all time, from my favourite band, so I could be seen to be biased, but hey that’s what opinions are all about I guess.

There are twelve songs on the album in total, and they show the diversity and creativeness which has earned Muse such acclaim from music critics and given them such a large and loyal fan base, as well as the title of ‘Best New Band’ at the NME awards. These songs introduce as to three bands members, the legendary Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, lead guitar, piano and, according to the inside sleeve, ‘alien samples,’) Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Dominic Howard (drums and percussion.) Matt is the inspiration behind all of their songs, which is not to detract from the other two, who are just as important to the band as a whole and are in fact responsible for it’s formation, but it is he who writes the wonderful, straightforward and moving lyrics, and the captivating riffs and baselines, and it is his innate weirdness that allows them to break away from the too-often heard sounds of many modern bands and bring us this new and innovative sound (which doesn’t mean they’re one of these weird bands like Mars Volta or Polyphonic Spree who don’t do sensible music, they’re just more daring to be different.)

The first song on the album is called Sunburn, and to my mind is still their best song to date, as well as being my favourite song ever. It starts off with a gentle but intriguing piano riff, which has become a trademark entrance into Muse’s albums, and introduces us to the talents of each band member individually. Firstly Matt leads with the piano (he taught himself to an amazingly high standard after deciding that his teacher was boring and would have just suffocated his talents) then Dom brings in the drums, just gently, following the tune rather than guiding it, then we get introduced to the thing which gives Muse their killer edge – Matt’s voice. He starts off softly, but when the song hits the chorus, “she burns like the sun, and I can’t loooooooooooook away” and throughout the chorus Chris plays a typically powerful, driving baseline which really brings the song to life. After tow verses and choruses, the song flies into a guitar solo, which brings you into the song on a whole other level, before wrapping up with a repeated line “I’ll hide from the world, behind this broken frame, and I’ll run for ever, can’t face the shame” which is sung in the most beautiful, tear-jerking strains I think I’ve ever heard.
This song was released as a single, and it’s accompanying video is amazing, an odd scene in which a mother has a breakdown in her bedroom, and there is a chilling ending when her son checks up on her, which I won’t ruin for those who haven’t seen it. It was released on the 22nd of February 2000 and had Ashamed and Sunburn live as B sides.

The second song is Muscle Museum, which has the same soft chorus/explosive chorus dynamic, dare I say reminiscent of Nirvana in some ways, and uses the most powerful chords on the album in the build up to the chorus, almost out of nowhere it nearly blows your head off as it changes up from soft to heavy, and sweeps you away with an emotionally-charged if short chorus. As the song builds up to the end, after the second chorus, Matt actually puts the microphone right on his mouth and displays his unique vocal talents by sustaining a high pitched but controlled wail, which matches his guitar, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was his guitar until you see him do it live. It should be mentioned that this song contains the worst line Matt has ever written, and the only bad thing in the entire album, which is “I have played in every toilet, but you still want to spoil it.” I think we can forgive him this one discrepancy in an otherwise masterpiece of a song.
This was also released as a single, and has an even more bizarre video which basically just shows lots of people in everyday situations (washing the car, eating cereal etc) who all burst out crying, and it is interspersed with clips of the band playing a small stage with no audience.
It was released on 22nd November 1999 and had Do We Need This and Muscle Museum acoustic as B sides.

The third song is Fillip, and no I don’t know where the name came from. This typifies the inexperience of the album, as it is a very simple song built around fast chords and drumming, and un-intricate repeated lyrics. It does still give off that unique Muse energy towards the end though, where it all goes quiet and slows down, before both guitars build their way back up with slowly loudening chords which build to a crescendo and a final chorus. Overall this song doesn’t have the same beauty about it as some of the others but should be applauded for daring to be simple and for showing that a song doesn’t always have to be clever to be great.

Muse have always been one of the few bands who you can rely on for a genuine acoustic slower song, not just a token gesture like so many bands feel the need to produce. The fourth song, Falling Down, is just such a song. It is another jaded love song, which is a crass over-generalization but does give an idea of the format of a lot of their songs, but that is where the similarity ends with the rest of the album to this point. It has an almost country-and-western feel to it, but surprisingly uses some of Muse’s more poetic and surreal lyrics, and is very rewarding if you take the time to listen to it, although it is the one example of Matt’s voice losing some purity, intentionally of course but an example of their inexperience. Still, a good change of pace and a necessary addition to the album as a complete piece.

The fifth song is Cave, which has also gone under the titles of Little Nicky and Nova Scotia. It is a song which is very much split into two parts, the first section is a fairly standard Muse song, with a faster-than-usual verse, and deploring vocals in the chorus, but after the second chorus it calms down and descends into a very chilled out fusion of piano, bass and drums which allow the listener to drift away, there is no more singing but about two minutes worth of music, which is a perfect example of just what makes Muse special, few bands dare to go more than a few seconds without singing and they happily tail off many a song by demonstrating their various talents.
This song was released as a single, and stands as the only Muse release which I have not seen the video of, so I unfortunately can’t comment on it, but if it’s anywhere near as good as the song then it must be worth watching. It was released on the 6th September 1999, and the B sides were Coma and Host which I must say are well worth listening to themselves.

Song 6 is the centerpiece of the album, and is what I would personally say sets this album apart from their others and shows how much courage they had in their own sound, that they could produce a song like Showbiz on their debut album, knowing that this would be what people had to take their first impressions from. It is a soaring piece, with very few different lines, and just listening to Matt as he repeats lines you can imagine him staring you in the face and singing through gritted teeth as if he really is angry and hurt. This song has a darker sound to it than any other, and the way it builds from start to end is a credit to the chemistry the band members have with one another and the genuine understanding they have of how to write a really good song from a strictly musical perspective. The song begins with Dom drumming, it is gentle and far away at first, but builds up in a way which reflects the nature of the song as a whole, and as soon as you start to wonder what the drums could be building to, the wailing guitar strains of Bellamy on lead kick in, and the song never looks back from there. The song only grows in strength from there, rising to a point where we find Matt wailing, both with his voice and on his guitar, and regardless of what mood you’re in when listening to the song you feel an empathy with his pain, right in your very soul. When it has reached it’s climax of tortured sounds, it dies away back into the pulsing drums which introduced it, very reminiscent of a fast racing heartbeat at a time of high emotion. It is sad that this song was never released, as it could really have turned a lot of heads and given Muse a bigger fan base early on in their career.

The seventh song is the second of the slow acoustic songs on the album, and may well be their best acoustic song to date, challenged only by Falling Away With you on the Absolution album. In it we find Chris playing a double bass and Matt an acoustic guitar, and it is just about the classic uplifting love song. This is a song which has real heart in it, and we hear this through the way Matt’s voice can stay both soft and strong, whilst reaching some pretty high notes at times. When you listen to the song, it will instantly bring to you thoughts of your true love, it really expresses how you feel when someone just has to be the right person and how others pale in comparison, it’s a genuine love song written by someone who is not afraid to tell of their deepest feelings. Truly beautiful, in the realest sense of the word.

Uno is the 8th song on the album, and the first song of theirs ever to be released, so deserves credit straight away for being the track which brought this scintillating band into the world. It starts with some distorted and swaying guitar sounds, but is soon overtaken by highly energetic guitar and a forceful baseline, which almost seems to tame the wild thrashings of the guitar and set the song back on course when it seemed to be getting out of control. When all this has died away, we are treated to some of the more sinister Muse lyrics, a side of Matt which is always present and is seen from time to time, and it really gets quite nasty “this means nothing to me, coz you are nothing to me,” words which are accompanied by a baseline which almost seems to be standing up for Matt against whoever he’s talking to. The movement into the chorus is swift and seamless, as all of a sudden we are introduced to something which Muse do better than any other band, which is to produce an entirely complete sound, using only three members you are knocked back by a very surrounding sound and some truly awesome singing from Matt, sung with such belief and raw energy that you can’t fail but be drawn in to the sound, if you close your eyes you can really imagine a vast space around you, filled only by the sound, eminating from these three figures who are insignificant compared to the size of their music, and just when it seems unstoppable it drops back into a verse, and prepares to do it over again.
Uno was released as a single, and the video shows a woman running through what seems to be endless corridors with numbered doors on them, searching for the band, who we see playing occasionally throughout to show how close she is from their perspective, if not from her own. The video has all the hallmarks of a mind-bending psychological thriller, but in just 3 minutes 38 seconds of song. It ends with a zoom out of where she has just come from, a door marked with just a number 1, which is a clever reference to both the song title, with Uno being the Latin word for ‘one’ I believe, and also the words of the chorus “you could have been number one.”
It was released on the 14th of June 1999, and the B sides were Forced In and Jimmy Kane.

The title of the next song is Sober, and to me this is a particularly meaningful song as I am an avid fan of sobriety. Although I have no official line on this, I believe it to be an anti-alcohol song, as there were plenty of rumours about Muse being alcoholics towards the start of their careers, and the lyrics talk of “Royal Canadian blended” and “the single malts come burning” while the chorus preaches “Suppose it stands to reason, that you would turn on me..” This is another of their non-stop, punchy songs, and it’s one which really makes you want to get up and jump around the room like a crazy man. This is a song of theirs which is often overlooked but I feel may be an expression of something deep and painful which they have found the strength to turn into a quite wonderful song, telling about themselves but not compromising the music itself. Apparently it contains Matt’s ‘alien samples’ somewhere, but I can’t say I’ve spotted them yet.

The tenth song is called escape, and is a truly genius use of song structuring. It begins like a slow song, gentle vocals, a soft rhythm tapped out on the drums and gently strummed guitar, and continues in this vain, with lyrics that are clearly disparaging someone for the way they live and who they are. All of a sudden, it just explodes with the lines “Why can’t you just love her, why be such a monster?” which gives the impression of someone who has just about been containing themselves but all of a sudden has flown into a rage, and it stays like this for the middle of the three sections of the song, which has no verses or chorus. When the angry lyrics are over the guitar and drums carry the fury on, banging away as if they are on the brink of losing all self-control, before there is a second sudden change, back to sounding almost exactly how it did originally, and it very cleverly ends with the exact same lines as it began with, as if to keep the rest of what has been said contained inside those lines.

The weakest song on the album (although this is hardly an insult, it’s like saying “the worst player on an all-star team”) is the penultimate track, Overdue. It is the shortest song, only 2 minutes 26 long, and shows us what this album could have been if a lesser band had had the same ideas. It is a very simple rock tune, although the verses set it apart from similar efforts from many other bands by their pace and imaginative lyrics, the chorus is too simple and repetitive, and there is surprisingly little offered by any of the instruments, which is usually such a feature of their work. I would expect Matt himself may describe the song as being a bit ‘cheap,’ a jibe which he threw a The Small Print on the latest album, a song which has many similar qualities. Not much else to say on this one though, it’s basically an impression of what Muse would do consistently if they didn’t care so much about their music and were just looking to make money.

Traditionally Muse have closed off albums with slower songs, which may not always stand out individually as songs but end the album as a piece magnificently. Hate This & I’ll Love You is just such a song. It starts with some summery sounds, including crickets, and some soft, warm guitar sounds. It is a very uplifting song, with lyrics like “But I am growing by the hour, and I’m getting strong in every way.” It doesn’t offer much in the way of excitement and is no rock classic, but it is another piece to ably demonstrate the diversity of Muse’s sound, and the ability Matt has to go from very soft and meek vocals to strong and forceful singing. You wouldn’t put the CD in your stereo and play this song to occupy 5 minutes of your day, but you would be glad to hear it at the end of the album, as it seems to offer a light at the end of the tunnel, hope through despair, and while the message of the album as a whole may not be a positive one the message of the song and the final thought you’re left with is.

The album as a whole is a complete success, a album which maybe a few bands could have produced when they were already established acts, but which no-one else would have had the confidence to make as their first ever. To this day it remains my favourite and most listened-to album of all time, and I have to say that it has been very important to me, a person who has a deep love of music, when times have been hard it has been one of the few constant sources I can rely upon to help me get in touch with my emotions, at the same time accessing the pain and helping to resolve it. A true modern masterpiece, and well worth buying at any price, let alone for under a tenner as it is in certain places. It says a lot to me that it still retails at it’s starting price in HMV.

To conclude - Buy it, listen to it, tell your friends about it…and then listen to it again. And enjoy.
 

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