Muse
Wembley Arena, London, 23rd November 2006

Muse are a bit like Marmite. Some people love them, and some people love to hate them. Very few people seem to be impartial towards them. Feeder, for example, they are not.

First things first, Wembley Arena is horrible. No matter how much they refurbish it and put pretty different coloured lights everywhere and a nice water feature out front, nothing will ever mask the fact that it is, in essence, a massive soul-less shed with all the style and charisma of an egg carton convention.

Thank God then that Muse are quite possibly the best live band around these days. This truly is a show. Massive video screens, moving drum risers, balloons, ticker tape. It's all quite exceptional. And that's all before you get to the songs. The set is very much heavy on material from Muse's fourth studio album "Black Holes and Revelations", an album which is probably more suited to this kind of theatrical arena show than any since "The Wall" by Pink Floyd.

Whilst newcomers will love to hear the new stuff, Muse keep some of the older material around for the more, ahem, "mature" fan. To be honest, I hadn't heard it for so long, I'd forgotten that the "Showbiz" album ever existed so it was nice to get "Muscle Museum" thrown in towards the end. It was only on the way home that I began to think about what they hadn't played and still formed quite an impressive list. Makes you realise how over the space of 4 albums Muse have got so many shit hot tunes that it'd be hard to fit almost half of them into a single gig.

Muse - Rock for scientists.

Richard Bull

Setlist:
1. Knights Of Cydonia
2. Starlight
3. Butterflies & Hurricanes
4. Map Of The Problematique
5. City Of Delusion
6. Plug In Baby
7. Forced In
8. Hysteria
9. Citizen Erased
10. Hoodoo
11. Invincible
12. Supermassive Black Hole
13. Time Is Running Out
14. New Born
15. Apocalypse Please
16. Bliss
17. Muscle Museum
18. Stockholm Syndrome
19. Take A Bow