The Tripod

Media Credit: Elizabeth Agresta [Click to enlarge]

On Saturday, March 6, British alternative rock band Muse stormed the stage of the Boston, Mass., TD Garden and played a set so phenomenal it almost dared the audience to leave unsatisfied. Judging by the vast number of audience members filing out of the arena after the encore singing bits of the band's more popular singles and raving about the spectacle they'd experienced for the last 90 minutes, I'm sure Muse kept up their end of the bargain.

After a short opening set by the LA-based Silversun Pickups, Muse - comprised of Matthew Bellamy (vocals, guitar, piano), Dominic Howard (drums, llama toenails), and Christopher Wolstenholme (bass, backing vocals, harmonica), and formed in 1994 in their hometown of Teignmouth, Devon - took the stage, but not without making a grand entrance. The Resistance Tour intro, "We Are The Universe," played as a video was broadcast onto three gigantic LED towers, covered in sheets designed to look like skyscrapers, which depicted silhouettes of men walking up several flights of stairs. As soon as the voice on the recording said, "We are the universe… destroying itself," the figures started falling, and soon enough, the sheets covering the towers fell to the ground (after a slight technical malfunction on the central tower) to reveal Bellamy, Howard, and Wolstenholme, who immediately launched into The Resistance's first single, "Uprising." Listening to it on your iPod simply doesn't convey how massive Bellamy's ideas, both philosophical and musical, are.

There was barely a pause before Muse began to play the title track of the new album, "Resistance," which features a Queen-esque pre-chorus and was accompanied by images of scrolling code, rotating human bodies (a woman with a visibly beating heart was certainly memorable), and DNA helices on the LED towers. By the end of the song, the pillars upon which each band member stood had lowered to stage-level.

"Map of the Problematique," the fifth single from Black Holes and Revelations (2006) came next, complemented by a manipulation of The Resistance's mosaic-style cover art on the screens overhead. "Supermassive Black Hole" (which was unfortunately popularized by the first Twilight film, and may explain the large number of young female fans present at the concert), followed immediately thereafter. The moshing that had occurred during the beginning of the show changed to dancing. Perhaps this was an effort to calm the crowd somewhat from their frenzied, synchronized movement, as Muse chose to follow the song with the 80's-esque power ballad "Guiding Light," cheesy in all the right ways.

The "Unintended" B-side "Nishe" was played as an intro to the Queen-influenced "United States of Eurasia," giving the roadies enough time to push Bellamy's plexiglass-topped Kawai LED piano onto his pillar, which rose (along with Howard's and Wolstenholme's) as he sang the song's gentle first verse. Once the refrain and second verse set in, video clips of politicians (including a short clip of President Obama shaking hands with the president of China) and a stylized map of what a United States of Eurasia would look like flashed across the LED towers.

Bellamy switched from guitar to keytar for the "Undisclosed Desires," the only Muse track lacking guitar instrumentation. A roar from the crowd sounded at the entrance of the familiar staccato opening theme, and I'm sure Bellamy's sexy crooning satisfied the undisclosed desires of many a female audience member.

"Plug in Baby," from Origin of Symmetry, started with a hiccup. During one of the last choruses a crowd surfer either fell or was purposely dropped, and Bellamy began to laugh hysterically when he caught sight of it, fudging some lyrics. He gestured and called out to the poor guy to get up, so the broken nose he inevitably suffered was probably worth it. The other audience members had a grand old time tossing about a number of gigantic eyeball balloons filled with confetti.

The penultimate song of the set and the band's first major U.S. hit, "Time is Running Out," was met with huge cheers and contained the beloved "TIRO shuffle," most notably performed at Glastonbury Festival in 2004, in which Bellamy dances around his microphone while playing a short guitar solo before the last pre-chorus.

The final song of the set was the grinding, guitar-heavy "Unnatural Selection," leaving the audience buzzing, but not for long. After a short wait and the sight of a ton of lighters and cell phones being waved about, the band resumed the stage and took to the skies (or their pillars, at any rate) to perform the first movement, "Overture," from "Exogenesis: a Symphony." The slow but intense orchestral piece worked beautifully in the stadium environment. Hopefully Bellamy will play with orchestral elements on future albums, since "Exogenesis" seems to be coming off as a success.

The show ended with the one-two punch of "Stockholm Syndrome" and "Knights of Cydonia," from Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations respectively. The grinding, alt-metal sound of "Stockholm Syndrome" made an interesting contrast with the spaghetti western space-rock anthem "Knights of Cydonia," but ultimately created a satisfying, overwhelmingly awesome ending to what was already a brilliant performance. They left the stage on a huge high, with thanks and compliments ("You f-king rock, Boston," Howard yelled before exiting the stage) to the crowd.

The truly wonderful thing about Muse is their fantastic showmanship. Their goal with each tour, it seems, is to shatter the glass ceiling set by their previous performances. Anyone who enjoys live music will be able to take something away from a Muse show, whether it's awe at the sheer magnitude of the set and lighting design or surprise at the wealth and depth of material (and face-melting guitar riffs) in Bellamy's music and lyrics. Even if you don't start as a fan when you see one of their shows, you will inevitably leave as one.

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