Missing Link

In this day and age, the radio waves are chalk full of unimaginative and uninspired crap that people consider popular music. Bands like Staind and Nickleback are revered by the masses, while those of us who have a soul and aren’t part of the herd of sheep known as “the masses” are left wondering what the hell they are thinking. I often find myself wondering how anybody could consider that crap to be music. I generally feel the same way about rap, too, though I think some rap actually has some merit. Don’t quote me on that, though.

The radio stations almost exclusively play cookie cutter band music. My Chemical Romance, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Fallout Boy… all of these bands sound exactly the same. A few weeks ago, while driving home from the office (and without the luxury of my ipod) I was listening to the radio and heard a song by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. I distinctly remember thinking “wow, I’ve heard this exact same song, with different lyrics”. They all sound the SAME. They’re all following the same formula and style as if they honestly have no idea how to create innovative and new music. They’re affraid of breaking the mold because they see the mold as the way to make money. In short, they’re less about making good music and more about making money by making mediocre (at best) music that the masses happily gobble up.

It’s largely for this reason that I don’t listen to the radio, unless (as i mentioned above) I’m without my ipod or a cd of songs burned from my music collection. I find little of any value there. I mostly hear about new music (new to me, anyways) from friends and family. I listen to a lot of Indie music, and stuff that I never (or at most, rarely) hear on the radio.

One of the bands I heard about through a friend, Phil Schroeder, is Muse. He introduced me to them almost exactly two years ago, as we were going to work out in the fitness center at SJC. He asked me, as he put in the cd, to tell him who I thought they sounded like. Almost as soon as I heard it, I immediately thought “radiohead”, which was exactly his thinking too. They did have a sound very similar to older radiohead (think: OK Computer). I borrowed the CD and after listening to more of it, I found that while they did pull some cues from radiohead, they had a distinctly unique sound as well. They took some influence from Radiohead, but didn’t make that the whole of their sound, but rather a part of it. Because of that, they have produced a sound that will make anyone who loved the old radiohead (before they became so bizarre and electronic) instantly fall in love. Of the three albums I’ve heard ( Origin of Symmetry, Absolution, and Black Holes & Revelations), I have yet to find much I dislike. Some of the songs on Absolution are a bit rough around the edges, but still manage to sound good. Nearly every song on Black Holes & Revelations are very solid and well produced, elevating it as slightly above the other two albums. The tracks starlight and Neo-Politics are two of my favorites, as they are filled with such magical energy that while listening to them sometimes all I can do is sit and stare blankly in wide eyed wonder. There are few albums that give me that feeling of freedom, that sense of wonderment. OK Computer , by radiohead, was perhaps one of the first albums I got that ever did that.

Now, it’s important to note that while I compare them a lot to radiohead, Muse is it’s own sound. It borrows from radiohead’s successes but it also adds it’s own to it, changing it all and taking ownership of the completed whole. The end result is that you don’t get another radiohead, but instead something far beyond what is radiohead. As Phil put it that night on the way to the fitness center “these guys are what radiohead should have been.”

As I listen to more new music (again, new to me) I will likely post more about my listening experiences. I’ve found that, while the radio plays mostly crap nowadays, there is still plenty of good music to be found if you’re willing to look for it.