SHOWBIZ

Muse debut album Showbiz is IMO a Radiohead clone album. This really turns me off. Try and imagine how Radiohead would have sounded if they made an album between Pablo Honey and The Bends, then you´ll know just about how Showbiz sounds. That Showbiz is produced by John Leckie who also produced Radiohead´s The Bends is no coincidence. The choice of producer shows very well how much Muse is influenced by that band.

The music is typical english emotional rock with an almost weeping lead singer in Matthew Bellamy who sounds suspiciously like Thom Yorke from Radiohead. There are not the big experimentation here really, just very average song structures and riffs. The mood is depressive as always with these kinds of bands.

The musicians are pretty good but doesn´t really show much here. I guess it wouldn´t suit the style with long instrumental passages. The emphazis is on the vocal melodies.

This is not an album I will listen to again, and that is not because it is all bad, as the quality in the song writing is high and the production is good too. It´s just that I don´t like the style much and IMO Muse still needed to find their own style on Showbiz. This simply sounds too much like Radiohead. 2 stars from me.