use’s lead singer Matthew Bellamy is well suited for the Thom Yorke position. His rolling tenor and appropriate use of falsetto complement the pummeling rock going on behind him. As for the rest of the band, they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves. Some riffs reek of metal, others of uninspired 90s alternarock. Oddly, there is virtually no Brit-pop audible in the guitars. Keyboard lines seem to want to emulate other popular new wave grooves, but end up sounding like a bad attempt at dance-pop compositions.


Some of these songs are actually quite interesting, however. Opener "New Born" runs many of Muse's influences together. The song begins with the previously described keyboards working the novelty angle. Matthew’s great voice comes in, "when you've seen, seen / too much, too young, young / soulless is everywhere". The song pumps up, distorted guitar and bass jump in. As they finish the little introductory riff, the guitar pauses momentarily to lose the distortion and gain a new urgency. This is the group at their best.


"Plug in Baby" rips off Air’s "Sexy Boy" heavily, managing to deplete its hipsters-making-out magic. The riff is bent around into a poppier mold, as the group plays some snore-inducing powerhouse rock. Matthew Bellamy shoots his voice up into difficult ranges, drums pound unnecessarily heavily, keyboards repeat the same figure, and it all ends up being completely fogettable.


Origin of Symmetry works best when it sticks to straight pop. Songs like "Hyper Music" and "Micro Cuts" flow by without much offense, in fact they even rock a little. It is when Muse go all technical that things start to get sad. "Citizen Erased" is the group deciding it can pull off a Paranoid Android tribute and failing miserably. There’s a noisy, faux-metal beginning that moves into a poppy development phase. After a cheesy chorus, the song moves to a floaty little middle section and eventually an instrumental passage recalling Johnny Greenwood’s more forgettable moments. The song takes an awfully long time to get back to the point, during which time there is an incredibly tacky flanged interlude.


Muse are very good at their craft. They pull off many of these strange, bombastic songs with minimal grating. However, the constant overplaying of everything waters it all down immensely. The volume is either minimal or overblown. The tone is either whispering-sad or shouting-sad. This eliminates nearly all surprises. Each song on Origin of Symmetry seems like the satisfactory accomplishment of some sort of quasi-rock blueprint.