British alt-rockers Muse are having quite a year. They are currently opening up a handful of dates on U2's North American tour and they have a song in the upcoming Twilight film. They also had No. 1 album in Canada last month.
Playing the opening slot under U2's jaw-dropping Claw would probably scare off only the most established of musicians. But Muse bassist Chris Wolstenholme is of a different opinion.
"It's a really good warm-up in a relatively low-pressure situation," he says, a handful of dates into his band's three-week opening run for U2.
"It's unusual playing in front of someone else's crowd, but it's working out well for us because we have a big European tour coming up and they're a band that we can learn a lot from," he adds, down the line from Washington, D.C.
Muse – Wolstenholme, frontman Matt Bellamy and drummer Dominic Howard, school friends who started playing together in 1994 – has packed London's Wembley and Paris' Parc des Princes stadium in 2007 and sold eight million albums worldwide. But, so far, runaway success in North America has been elusive.
"And that's a good thing," he clarifies. "I think bands that have a slower build tend to stay around longer. When you have an album that's huge straight away everywhere there are certain expectations on you and it's nice when you don't have that and you can just gradually get people listening."
But "The Resistance," Muse's recently-released fifth studio effort, and the choice U2 gigs have made the relatively low-key chatter that surrounds the trio in these parts hard to ignore. Their first single, "Uprising," was featured on MTV's Video Music Awards and the bombastic anthem has become a favourite of right-wing Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.
"It feels like we're getting caught up," says Wolstenholme. "There's definitely a buzz surrounding this album that I haven't felt before and that's great; it's what we always wanted."
Even though Beck's rants might not jive with the band's politics, Wolstenholme says Bellamy's lyrics lash out at people on the left and right.
"I don't really know too much about [Beck], so I don't want to comment too much and put my foot in it," he laughs. "People can look at lyrics and take what they want from it. Matt is not really specific about what he's singing about or what side he's on a lot of the time.
"It's not like Rage Against the Machine where their lyrics are so political and direct that you know exactly what they're talking about because [vocalist Zack de la Rocha] makes references to specific people and events. Matt doesn't do that; people can interpret it how they want."
But that openness has its drawbacks. People tend to have misconceptions about the band, he says.
"They think we're these deadly serious, geeky types that have our heads in conspiracy books 24/7. People don't realize that when we make music, we have a lot of fun. There's a lot of laughter that happens in the studio," mentioning the Queen-meets-Frederic Chopin inspired "United States of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage)" as a case in point.
More important than convincing listeners that the world isn't about to end, Wolstenholme continues, was writing tunes that pushed Muse out of its comfort zone.
"The record's string arrangements and songs like [the Depeche Mode-esque] 'Undisclosed Desires' almost throw the whole concept of being a three-piece band out the window," he says. "We want our fans to recognize the music as being Muse, but at the same time we want to explore different areas."
So while the album consists of guitar-driven songs that are quite typical of Muse, it ends with a three-part symphony – "Exogenesis." Over 13 minutes, it features a 40-piece orchestra, rippling synths and plaintive piano punctuated by Bellamy's piercing falsetto.
"It hints to things we've done before," Wolstenholme says. "Dom and I have listened to Matt play these really nice classical things on the piano and we thought it would be nice to incorporate these little pieces that he plays into the band format. It was hard to imagine how this would work as one whole piece, but when the song was close to being finished it really started to make sense."
He admits it will be a challenge to recreate the song live. But by the time Muse makes it back to North America to headline its own tour next spring, he says that the band will have a stage set-up that will more than make up for the song's absence.
"I don't think we'll have the Claw," he says, laughing. "But we've got an idea that consists of a bunch of podium-type buildings that me, Matt and Don will stand on that will move up and down.
"That's one of the things U2 has always done really, really well. They push it when it comes to putting their live show together. I think so many bands go out and have a stage that consists of a couple of screens and a bunch of lights and everybody's done that. In fact, everyone still does that.
"I've always liked the idea of having stage sets that aren't typical, so even though we haven't run around the big circle, it's nice to see a band building a full-on monstrous structure rather than a stage with lights."
