#This was for a 1500 word final essay for a writing elective I took in first year; the only kind of place it would still be tolerated lol.

[sunburnacoustic]

Muse - Absolution (2003)

After years of waiting, loaded with trials and experimentation, apocalypse finally has a soundtrack. No, it’s not the angsty, heady crooning of yet another musician in love, it’s not the introspective Beatle having seen the Truth, it is not Johnny Rotten tearing down the Establishment (again), and it isn’t the self-destruction a James Hetfield would growl about.

Apocalypse as a genre has been claimed and made a natural home in, and by a seemingly unassuming young band hailing from the idyllic seaside Middle Of Nowhere, Teignmouth, Devonshire in England: alt-prog rockers Muse.

Muse’s 3rd studio album Absolution (released in 2003) picks up on the big sounds and potential the band had been showing throughout their second album and takes it twenty notches higher. The instrumentation is solid, the rhythms are tight, the guitars loud, the sound, bombastic in moments and delicate, vulnerable and beautiful in the next, the lyrical themes are exploratory, and the band themselves seem to find their feet and lay down the foundations of what even today makes up their signature ‘Musey’ sound.

Yet that little summary couldn’t begin to do justice to the grandiose and power this album packs. At it’s finest, Muse take you on a fifty-two minute trip out of the world (quite literally, as the titular track ‘Sing For Absolution’s music video features the band jetting off into outer space to escape the planet only to have their spaceship crash down into a burning, post-apocalyptical London), charming and haunting you with dark, sustained Rachmaninoff-esque piano breakdowns and blowing you away with larger-than-life drums, distorted guitar and bass working in perfect synch to build up a rising tide-wall of sound that may make it hard at times to remember that there are but three musicians in the recording rooms shaking up your world, as singer Matt Bellamy wails, sings and warbles on about facing death (‘Thoughts of a Dying Atheist’), running out of time (‘Time Is Running Out’), meeting up with the Devil himself (‘The Small Print’), and changing the world (‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’), amongst other things, with each song bearing as Muse-like a name as there comes.

And Matt Bellamy, contrasting this album with their previous efforts, said in an interview that Absolution “is more about us being personable, about us being normal people at home”. 

Well, normal Matt Bellamy at home, that is.

The album is introduced with a stomping, twenty second intro, the sound of boots getting closer and heavier, culminating in a single phrase: “Siege heil… marsche!” Twenty seconds in, the apocalyptical themes have already begun kicking in.

But before you have the time to breathe, the first song of the album, ‘Apocalypse Please’ begins, coming right at you with all of Bellamy’s pensiveness and despair, heavy ‘apocalyptical’ piano chords and drums crashing down on you as Matt declares that Earth needs a miracle and that “this is the end of the world”, layering the chorus as multiple Bellamy’s seal humanity’s fate.

The song’s mid/low tempo (around 80bpm) and loud vocals—almost cries of despair, really—and the closing bars with amplified, sustained single bass notes under forceful piano run-up chords, work quite well in conjuring up quite the image the band is looking to build and set the scene for the rest of the album to come.

Following this is one of the singles off the album, ‘Time Is Running Out’, starting with a low, almost choking yet flowing bassline with Bellamy almost breathing out lines like ‘I think I’m drowning/Asphyxiated/I want to break this spell that you created’, a song that starts out soft, restrained, then building up to the chorus as a tormented Bellamy tries to break free and realises that their time is running out, again employing the signature Muse technique of layering multiple guitars and vocals to build up a wall of sound, amplifying Matt’s thoughts, as does its twin later on the album, ‘Hysteria’.

On the titular track, ‘Sing for Absolution’, Bellamy seems to find a Muse of his own, turning inwards to a much more relaxed tempo. The band makes effective use of bassist Chris Wolstenholme’s staccato bass, offset and complemented by the almost dreamlike delayed, echoing guitars and pianos, to cook up an image of a lonely, reflective singer up alone in a room on the top floor of a house, sitting in the faint blue gleam of starlight, gazing out the window into space, thinking about his own life (‘Tiptoe to your room/A starlight in the gloom/I only dream of you/And you never knew’).

On ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, Matthew Bellamy takes the tried and tested ‘captor-and-captive-fall-in-love’ narrative, a darling of writers and musicians everywhere, and breathes new life into it by adding a new dimension of emotions to it, playing on the presumed captor-narrator’s guilt, confusion and sense of hopelessness (‘And she’ll scream and she’ll shout, and she’ll pray/And she had a name’; ‘We’ll love and we’ll hate and we’ll die/All to no avail…’; ‘This is the last time I’ll forget you… I wish I could’)

Muse use drummer Dominic Howard’s drums; pounding, loud and noticeable as a heartbeat in a quiet room; and Bellamy’s trembling vibratos to effectively paint the brutality and vulnerability; indeed, in the last chorus, behind the brute forces crashing on the guitars, bass and drums, one can hear the almost fragile, delicate piano arpeggios in the background, swallowed up by the guitars, almost hidden, protected, in a story that extends beyond the words.

Muse’s ability to switch from a light-hearted, fast-paced tone to a brooding, dark, haunting wail with effortless ease and grace stands out throughout the album and particularly on the sixth track on the album, ‘Falling Away With You’. The song, almost a hidden gem tucked away snugly in the middle of the album, is one of the few times the man who would go on to sing about conspiracy theories, the second law of thermodynamics and uprisings, turns inward and reflects on the people in his life and his relationships with them.

The song’s opening is slightly similar to Blackbird by the Beatles, with a quiet, reverberating guitar over a near-silent backdrop as Bellamy sings about his fears of forgetting a loved one and how relationships change, slowly building up and letting his bandmates catch up in a sort of relay-race, to a chorus that bursts to life with a screaming Matt falsetto-ing to a climax as the band fades to make space for Bellamy to calm down again, and the cycle continues.

It would be fair to say that the bass line drives the next track off the album, ‘Hysteria’. The song opens with a booming bass riff and all the straight faced extravagance that is both the band’s signature and legacy. A three-way harmonic melody solo rages on in the upper octaves that run in the background of the last chorus as a tormented Matthew tries to break free of his inner demons and Muse bring the song to a close in a manner worthy of a stadium closure.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Muse album without experimentation, and while Muse aren’t recording in zero gravity (for now), the band takes to string arrangements in search of new sounds and avenues on ‘Blackout’, dishing up a slow lament, complemented by fuzzy single note tremolos, and it only gets better on the next track, ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’, as Bellamy sounds off a call to arms to get up and change the world, and “use this chance to be heard”. The strings create a dystopian air, with a terse, fuzzy bass running underground and Wolstenholme’s backing vocals playing in the open skies as Bellamy commands his summoned army to action. His emotions seem to spill out of his fingers onto the piano in sudden gushes in a beautiful, flying, sustained solo that stands even today as a testament to Bellamy’s superior skills on the keys.

Absolution marks a sonic departure from Origin of Symmetry (2001) in that the production seems a lot more refined and cleaner. The band favours richer, fuller sounds: more gain-heavy guitars and bigger drums that would feel home in arena, as opposed to the “dirtier”, more grungey, piercing sounds used on their previous endeavours.

 However, there is tons for fans of the band to savour (in addition to a very musically accomplished record) on the track ‘The Small Print’. Bellamy returns to one of his pet themes as he takes on the role of the apathetic Devil (‘I’m a priest God never paid’), watching the world and its happenings with an omniscient eye (‘I hope you’ve seen the light/because no one really cares/They’re just pretending’), a nod back to Origin-era songs like ‘Hyper Music’. The band’s commendable execution, both with the lyrics as well as the rough, almost lo-fi edge in the production on this piece make it astonishingly powerful for a song with a niche theme and a simple guitar riff repeating over shifting root bass notes.

There really is never an uneventful moment on the fifty-two minute, thirteen-second record. The band throw familiarity to the winds on their next track, ‘Endlessly’, a song both very predictably Muse-like, yet something quite unlike anything the band had done before. Trading in the guitar for dampened, “muddy” synths, Muse give you the feeling of sitting underwater, drowned in the waterfalls of sound. Synth chords fall silently around you and ripple under the layers of arpeggiated synths that build up the wall of—excuse the pun—endless sound and lock you into Bellamy’s greyness as he promises a loved one the he’ll do anything for them but won’t leave them– until finally deciding that that moment never comes and calming down to a finish, internal turmoil now at rest.

Bellamy, mind wandering like a child, turns to more existential ideas soon after on ‘Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist’, a fast-paced, energetic and curiously happy-sounding piece, musically, for a song that is about an atheist at the end of their life, knowing that what lies ahead of them is nothingness (‘It scares the hell out of me/And the end is all I can see’) and seems to create an ironic contrast between the energy of the song and the narrator’s nervousness that works to the band’s credit.

Muse continue to shock and awe, haunt and bewitch you right up to the very last song on the album, ‘Ruled By Secrecy’. Lyrically perhaps the most quotidian song on the album, this track deals with the pressures in life and realising that you’ll never be on top. Lyrically and musically, it’s one of the darkest pieces in the band’s repertoire, beginning with low, quiet pianos. A ghostly, whispering Matt, sings with sustain and echo, recreating an almost surprisingly gothic, medieval church-like sound reminiscent of the Middle Ages, bringing to mind fear, uncertainty and mistrust (‘they’ll hide everywhere/no one knows who’s in control’), gathering force and building up to the signature piano crashing chord work that defines this album throughout. 

The song, and consequently the album, ends with a final touch to the cymbals, a subtle finish to an album with so much grandiose, its power and assertion leaving the listener reeling and the band flying high on yet another tasteful record successfully polished off.

Watch out Martians, Muse are coming.

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A review for Absolution I wrote back in first year in 2018. Happy 20 years of Absolution! I'm happy to note that this time around, with the reissue, Fury will not be left off the album anymore, and my review will (happily) be out of date come November.

[lilianrogers]

January Books

The thirteenth month of 2020 is coming to close and I managed to read yet another book about a global pandemic (Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim), dip my newbie toes into Henry VIII’s love life (Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel), experience the weird weird weird world of Jeff VanderMeer (in Dead Astronauts), and pick up a self-published collection by two local - but not residing in Singapore - academics, Cherian George and Donald Low (PAP v. PAP). 

For my thoughts in video form check out my YouTube video: https://youtu.be/MdG8O81QPYQ

Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim

Somehow I managed to read four books set during a global flu-like pandemic over the past several months. I finally figured out that this is not because authors are suddenly gripped by the subject, but that these books always existed and are now coming to the fore. I was eager to pick this one up because it's written by a Singaporean-Canadian author and it was mentioned to me by my friend Daryl.

Ocean of Minutes turned out to be the most depressing of the flu books I’ve read, with the main character Polly never catching a break. Polly has time traveled to the future in a kind of indentured servitude to work for the company that will also provide the treatment for her boyfriend Frank who has caught the flu and must remain behind. They pick a meet up location for when Frank’s timeline has caught up to Polly’s.

Lim uses this premise to critique the treatment of workers under capitalism, and the callousness of the immigration system in the US. It’s also a neat vessel for reflections on love, and whether Frank and Polly’s young romance can stand the test of time, and their struggles apart from each other. Highs for me included the tender and realistic depiction of the early days of Frank and Polly’s relationship. Lows included the hamfisted manner in which Lim critiques the systems that strip us of our humanity (these scenes of despair mostly served to move the plot along rather than build an organic sense of indignation), and the frustrating naiveté (borderline cluelessness) of Polly. 

Rating: 3.5/5 

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I am very late to the game on this one. Everyone, including both of my parents, read Wolf Hall when it first came out in 2009 (to critical acclaim). This first book of Mantel’s trilogy is a dramaticized history of 1500-1535 England through the lens of Thomas Cromwell, a well known advisor to English archbishop and Catholic cardinal, Thomas Wolsey, and later to Henry VIII. Key events covered include: Wolsey’s downfall, Henry’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn (and her maneuverings to become Queen), and the many executions of heretics, traitors, and fallen politicians. 

Thomas Cromwell really comes alive as a cosmopolitan and industrious man, and there is some gut wrenching writing from Mandel, but I think you need to already have a relationship with this history in order to really fall in love with this book. Every mega fan I know is British, and someone in my book club summed it up perfectly by calling Wolf Hall the “Hamilton: An American Musical” for Brits. To have history that you’ve known all your life, but only in a superficial way, sketched out with such detail and drama is a kind of drug. Unfortunately I didn’t even know Henry VIII had six wives until reading this book, so I remained mostly immune. My early 16th century European history is quite up to snuff now though, so feel free to quiz me. 

Rating: 3.8/5

Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

This is the weirdest book I’ve read in ages. Dead Astronauts is book two of VanderMeer’s Bourne trilogy (which I did not realize until later). I picked it up from my local library because I liked the cover and because the first book of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, Annihilation, gave me literal goosebumps. 

I still have no idea what I read, and there’s not really a plot in this book so much as a bunch of snapshots with recurring characters, which include anthropomorphized animals and the three dead astronauts (only one of which is human, I think). The only thread I can confidently say I understood is that there is an evil Company that has destroyed the natural Earth with terrifying biological experiments that produce Hieronymus Bosch-like creatures. There are multiple realities and universes, and the astronauts are working towards some kind of common goal (but I couldn’t tell you what that is). 

But the point of this book is definitely not plot. It’s a book that is meant to creep you out, and leave you bewildered by a slew of environmental horrors (Jeff VanderMeer’s specialty). Through this kaleidoscope of weirdness you get a solidified feeling of the cruelty of humans and the brutality of environmental degradation. The form is also totally unconventional with the use of different fonts, multiple pages of the same words repeated over and over, and passages that read like spoken word. I didn’t really know what was going on most of the time, but sometimes it’s okay to have a book where you’re just along for the ride.

Rating: 3.5/5

PAP v. PAP by Cherian George and Donald Low

I am a Cherian George fangirl and really felt my Singapore politico identity come to fruition when I ordered this self-published collection hot off the presses. The main argument of this volume of short essays by the two academics is that the PAP is here to stay (at least another 15 years) and true reform must come from within the party itself, rather than from external forces or the Opposition. I am not fully convinced this is possible, but if there is any political party enlightened enough to overcome the kryptonite of control maybe it’s Lee Kuan Yew’s. 

This was a fun read because it is so recently published and includes all of the events of the most recent General Election that took place in July 2020, but in general I felt that it skimmed the surface (either providing a too-basic overview of issues like economic distribution and democratic accountability, or rehashing well-known arguments). I much prefer George’s Singapore Incomplete, which feels both snappier and better thought through. 

Maybe George and Low might have been better served by writing a book solely focused on the case for why reform must come from within (and how, whether that’s possible or even likely, and in-depth examples from other countries), instead of providing short overviews of many different issues. The chapter that offered the freshest view and food for thought was the last one, “Riding the populist tiger,” which dissects how the recent wave of populist nationalism in the world has provided the PAP with a political advantage, but is also a poison that could threaten Singapore’s longer term stability.

I also agreed with George and Low’s appeal for a “PAP that wants to lead not just to rule”. They argue that the PAP must be bold in describing a positive vision for Singapore, rather than continuing to position itself as a protector of Singapore from “its inherent vulnerabilities”. The PAP should be proud of the material success and stability Singapore has been able to accrue since independence, but George and Low are right in saying gone are the days when the PAP can simply rest on these laurels. PAP leaders should address the issues of the day with the confidence and creativity of a dominant party.   

Finally, the status and treatment of foreign workers in Singapore received widespread public attention during the Covid-19 pandemic, and I am looking forward to an in-depth treatment of this topic, which George and Low mention only in passing in this book. 

Rating: 3.5/5