Coming to theaters in November, the most diabolical plot yet for world domination from a familiar trio of cybernetic mercenaries. After acquiring Netflix, HBO Go, and Amazon Prime accounts, they achieve technological singularity halfway through a “Stranger Things” binge, having consumed enough popular media to pass now as humans. If that sounds like the typical plot of any Muse album, it essentially becomes their autobiography on their eighth, Simulation Theory. Muse’s most approachable and most ruthlessly broad record yet, it is an attempt to replicate Scorpion’s Spotify omnipresence, so on the nose the first track is called “Algorithm.” Even singer Matt Bellamy has taken off the shutter shades to take a good look in the mirror and admit that, despite Muse’s operatic ambitions, they have always been a pop band.
The instrumental pyrotechnics. Production from Rich Costey, Shellback, Mike Elizondo, and even Timbaland. Bellamy’s megawatt vocals and vague platitudes about breaking free and overcoming something or another: There is little functional difference between Muse and “Fight Song,” especially since most people encounter them in four-minute chunks on corporate radio, anyway. They’ve produced two solid decades of singles that are enjoyable enough when divorced from the insufferable political significance or higher intelligence they use as filler for their full-lengths. Like Coldplay but without the advantage of rapper cosigns, they’ve moved from “Radiohead if they still played alt-rock” to “Radiohead if they got into EDM.”
And what’s more in line with this decade’s prevailing commercial trends than rebooting the least-obscure IP as something more shiny and self-aware? People will enjoy Simulation Theory because it’s essentially Ready Player One on wax, its techno-dystopian plot merely a piñata for pop culture nuggets that spill out on slightest contact. Because they are Muse, they can get “Stranger Things”’ Kyle Lambert to design the cover and throw in some blatant visual cues to Drive and Tron. The fluorescent howler “The Dark Side” could’ve easily been called “The Upside Down,” so credit Muse for showing some restraint. What once were string-tapping solos or tripled-tracked riffs are now sequencers, because it’s not enough for Muse to share festival stages with S U R V I V E or M83. If need be, Muse can simply replace them. That notion of swapped parts applies to the politics of Simulation Theory, too. “Propaganda” conflates a seductive woman with a totalitarian surveillance state; otherwise, these are the trite warnings of paranoid androids who have already made albums called Drones and The Resistance.
This is a band that has given up on trying to look cool to most anyone, so Muse do here what they have always done and likely will always do—throw money at their latest fancy with the indiscriminate, earnest taste of a teenage boy. The sequencers on “Algorithm” are on loan from any number of post-Chromatics opportunists, but none of them would actually add a real string section like Muse. “Propaganda” and “Break it to Me” veer frighteningly close to the monogenre pop that has crowded out guitar music on rock playlists, except Bellamy still believes in solos. A damn dobro even rises from the digital belches and fingersnaps of the former, with Bellamy doing his best Tom Morello impression before he overdubs a theremin.
If there’s anything Muse truly nail here, it’s at last embracing just the right amount of camp—not an easy skill for earnest bands to pick up on the fly, as U2 and the Arcade Fire have proven. In the past, that never stopped Muse’s name from gracing Grammy trophies, arena marquees, or the top of Billboard charts. Even if Simulation Theory is harder to laugh at than Muse’s previous records, and its appeal makes their longevity easier to understand, does that make it good pop, or are they simply less fun to kick around now? The lingering discrepancy between Muse’s popular and critical reputations comes from the fact that they have never before expressed humor in their own superhero cosplay, which by Drones entailed shiny suits and a stage made of magnets. They used to think they were Christian Bale’s Batman, and are starting to accept that it’s OK to be Adam West.
