A meme circulates among over-privileged western male nerds: that we might all be living in a simulation. Muse’s eighth album title tilts at the notion; tracks called Thought Contagion and Algorithm, meanwhile, reinforce the impression that the Devonian trio continue to play the canaries in our impending apocalypse.
Muse, though, are great at simulations. When they’re not sounding like a dystopian prog opera scored by Jean-Michel Jarre, they can whip out surprisingly sexy machine funk. On their fourth album it was Supermassive Black Hole. Here, it’s a monster called Propaganda, which starts with fart-bass and resolves into Prince’s Kiss. Break It to Me fashions breakbeats out of machine parts and what sounds like a ghostly theremin, while the catchy Pressure has not only an earworm of a riff but Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Terry Crews in the video.
This is Muse very much in VR play mode, riffing hard on their love of 80s visual culture – a recurring theme in the interlocking videos. No track here breaks the five-minute mark; only Something Human lets the side down with an acoustic guitar.
