Digging up the Muse

I’ve been a bit lazy this week, digging around for one-shots for the aim of writing as little as possible. Today is no different, and your blast from the past this time is Muse.

I grabbed these tracks way back in sixth form, scarily 6/7 years ago now, when me and my friend harassed another Computing A-level student in a Muse t-shirt to lend us the rare Random 1-8 B-sides CD. It collects the non-album tracks that appeared on the band’s early EP’s, when Matt Bellamy still sang like he wanted to be Jeff Buckley and they weren’t really sure how far to push the dramatics. For that reason, the songs aren’t brilliant, but they are still pretty damn good (two ended up as Hullabaloo content, although I think two here are better). Funnily enough, before the release of Origin of Symmetry all of these tracks were freely available to stream from their over-the-top Flash site (for the times anyway).

Pink Ego Box (or Instant Messenger on one of the EP’s) is probably my favourite, a quiet introduction building and leading to a bass heavy crunch of an outro. Only this time, instead of about space dementia and black holes he sings about chatting to his would-be girlfriend on MSN. Interesting.

Coma rocks out Showbiz style, riffs all over the place, a particularly tasty main course with again (unintentionally?) humourous lyrics. ‘I don’t care simply because I can’t wake up and find it in me / I’m in a coma’. Right. It does show the Muse dynamic pretty well, though, Matt’s manic licks over that solid rhythmic backbone. The last chorus tries pretty hard, but unfortunately can’t reach the same peak as something like Cave or Sober (another one for amusing lyrics).

The last song here, Host, shows Matt had a love for the ‘singing-into-the-megaphone’ trick a long time before Feeling Good. Its quite reminiscent of another cover of theirs, House of the Rising Sun, only with tacked on lost verses from Unintended in-between.

After reading what I just wrote, I guess I’m not really selling the quality of the tracks. They are a decent trio of songs, nothing special, just a welcome alternative to those who want to hear something different from them, that isn’t packed to the teeth with their now patented over-ambitiousness. However, it does also just make me want to put Showbiz on again and bounce around the room. See you in a bit…

From Random 1-8 EP (2000):
Muse – Pink Ego Box (Instant Messenger) MP3 Expired
Muse – Coma MP3 Expired
Muse – Host MP3 Expired href=”http://www.amazon.co.uk/Random-1-8-Japanese-Muse/dp/B000050YOE/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-1402069-7508714?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1175175629&sr=8-1”>Good luck with buying this]

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: 30 Mar 2007 08:00 |  Tags: Audio Indie Muse Music Rarities Rock |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem