After what feels like an age of radio silence, Muse, this past week, have emerged from the beyond with a series of rather awesome teasers for their new single, “Be With You”.
In one of the clips, the date ‘August 15, 1977’ appears on the screen over the top of an eerie monologue by actress Ella Balinska. No doubt my fellow geeks and nerds pricked up their eyes and ears at the reference to the Wow! Signal, an anomalous narrow-band radio signal detected by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University on that date. The 72-second signal (the longest window of recording available to Big Ear) was unusually strong, and uncharacteristically loud in contrast to the surrounding noise. It was intriguing as it was at or very near to the frequency of neutral hydrogen, seemingly of extra-terrestrial origin.
The teaser also featured the flash of the letters ‘6EQUJ5’, which is the code that reflects the intensity of the signal captured during those 72 seconds. The scale begins at 0, rising up to 9, and then upwards through the alphabet, so it essentially starts at zero, climbing as high as U before descending. Rather than possessing any hidden message, the numbers and letters in the code are points at which the signal was observed, and the shape of the signal is a Gaussian profile bell curve (throwback to maths class there!).
It came as no surprise that overnight they announced their tenth studio album, The Wow! Signal, but it did arrive via unexpected means. Partnering with Sent into Space, the band launched a specially-designed tablet 33 kilometres into the atmosphere to not only announce the new album, coming out on 26 June, but to premiere the video for the new single.
Muse are no strangers to cosmic, interstellar themes – “Space Dementia”, “Black Holes and Revelations”, “Knights of Cydonia”, “Dead Star”, and “Exogenesis Symphony” just a handful of examples. Space Muse is usually great Muse, so the excitement around this new release is warranted. The question is, setting my lifelong love of all things science and space aside, how does the song stack up?
My initial response, also taking into account it was 6am and I was heading out the door to work, was that of being slightly underwhelmed. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the song, more that I’d hoped for Muse at their bombastic best. The track starts with Matt Bellamy‘s vocals accompanied by the teased pipe organ, slowly building into…light electronica. Hmm. The second verse brought in some frankly lovely harmonies, but still easing along, sitting above the pulsing gallop. Nothing eyelash curling. It’s not until we reach just shy of 2 and a half minutes in before we are met with the delicious growl of Chris Wolstenholme‘s bass, Dom Howard‘s drums, and the riffing guitar of Matt Bellamy. It’s a reassuring burst that, interestingly, I clocked at lasting 72 seconds. As so often happens for me with new music from this band, which I’ve followed for over 20 years, is the need to allow time before forming my opinion. Having sat with ‘Be With You’ for the day, I’m much more into it than I was at first listen, happily discovering the myriad of layers within, and particularly enjoying the harmonies in the vocals. I also have faith that this forms part of something spectacular that will reveal itself with the new album.
It looks like I’ll be climbing into that spaceship in June and trusting in Bellamy and co to steer me towards new musical horizons.
