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Muse Homecoming Show - Review

Rock Sound journalist Trevor Baker files a review of the Muse homecoming show in Teignmouth this weekend. Click to read.

Unsurprisingly Muse decided not to play ‘Falling Down’ at their triumphant homecoming to Teignmouth this weekend.

The track, from their first album, with the line “Five thousand houses burning down / No-one is gonna save this town,” is famously about how much they hated their hometown. In an early press release they described the town as, “barely breathing in summer, stone cold dead in the winter...And if you were aged between 13 and 18, a living hell the whole year round." It’s fair to say things have changed since then.

The 10,000 fans who’ve gathered on the front to see them, many of them locals, have nothing but love. There are people packed on to the balconies of the posh Georgian houses overlooking the front and the atmosphere, even before Muse arrive is a cross between a carnival and a religious ceremony. Radio One’s Zane Lowe will rarely get a more enthusiastic response to his time-honoured combination of King Twat persona and impeccably chosen tunes.

In response Muse look, well, a bit nervous when they sidle onstage. In the circumstances it seems a bit mean-spirited to say that they’re not quite on top form for the first half an hour. The first new track, ‘Resistance’, sounds like it’s going to a favourite in the future but the melancholia of the lead vocal somewhat overpowers the hook, which is buried in the backing vocals. The second new track ‘United States Of Eurasia’ is more confident but it’s a cover of the famous 60s instrumental track ‘Popcorn’ that seems to settle their nerves.

‘Starlight’ is the first tune to live up to all the hype and from then on they’re back to their exuberant best. The third and fourth new tracks ‘Undisclosed Desires’ and ‘Unnatural Selection’ are more experimental, the former woozily magnificent, the closest thing to trip-hop that they’ve ever done and the latter coming across as a kind of angry chug.

The setlist for the evening was as follows:

Map Of The Problematique
Supermassive Blackhole
Resistance
Hysteria
New Born
Feeling Good
United States Of Eurasia
Cave
Popcorn
Starlight
Undisclosed Desires
Time Is Running Out
Unnatural Selection
Stockholm Syndrome
Plug In Baby
Knights Of Cydonia

For a photo gallery of pictures from the homecoming click here, for more on the band be sure to check out the next issue of Rock Sound magazine.