Muse, Stade de Suisse, Berne, 17 June 2013
When being swept away by the multimedia maelstrom that is Muse live, it’s sometimes hard to remember that deep down they are an extremely good power trio playing songs with catchy hooks and huge singalong choruses. Seeing them on stage ten years after the last time I went to one of their gigs, I had been vaguely concerned that the extent and impact of their stadium show could distract from their intrinsic qualities as a traditional three-piece rock band; I should not have worried, as their long apprenticeship and commitment to rocking out ensured that the special effects and the pyrotechnics remained an enhancement to the show rather than a replacement for musicianship.
Not that the effects were not spectacular. Six huge liquid fire generators high above the stage provided impressive punctuation at key moments, both visually and physically as the waves of heat rolled across the stadium.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that when sitting down with their designers to plan the technical side of this tour, the remit was to work out where Queen would have drawn the line and then start their planning the other side of it. But it worked. The big screens were used sensibly and were indeed necessary for the segments in which the aggressive businessman stalked the stage (Animals) and the overworked businesswoman broke down (Feeling Good); without the close-ups, the point would have been missed by the majority of the audience.
The multimedia aspects were well employed, too, with videos and animations and key words from the lyrics projected up to add an additional layer of dynamism to the proceedings.
The stage design was used effectively, too, with the runway out into the centre of the pitch allowing the members of the band to move around and be a little less cut off from the audience – the days of my early stadium gigs back in the mid-1980s, with the bands motionless dots on a stage the far end of the ground, seem to be long since gone – and to allow for slick changeovers between songs and the rapid and inconspicuous changing of props.
When bands have such a long and impressive back catalogue the choice of setlist will inevitably become difficult and there will be disappointments for the fans. I was slightly disappointed not to hear my own favourite Muse song, Map of the Problematique, but it is difficult to find fault with a set list that began Supremacy – Supermassive Black Hole – Panic Station – Bliss – Resistance and went on to contain all the hits and a good spread of material from the whole course of their career. As someone who is more used to going to gigs that are somewhat more metal than this, I was impressed by the amount and enthusiasm of the dancing throughout the stadium… Muse are one of the few bands who can combine a real feel for a dance rhythm with pounding hard rock arrangements and this show demonstrated both, often simultaneously.
As the night sky grew darker the lightshow became more complex and culminated with a huge inflatable lightbulb drifting over the crowd, opening to reveal an acrobat (Blackout), although the band did not neglect subtlety in choosing to perform Guiding Light in almost complete darkness, with sufficient illumination provided by thousands of swaying lighters and phone screens.
Inevitably there were moments when a more detached perspective could generate questions about what was being presented. An enthusiastic multimedia Unsustainable was visually and sonically impressive but was presumably powered by the outputs of a couple of small power stations, while the whole undertone of the evils of unbridled capitalism did sit slightly uneasily with the facts that 45,000 people had paid healthy prices for their tickets and that the merchandising stalls were doing a roaring trade. But these reflections are perhaps too cynical. The show was excellent, exhausting, entertaining and professional, and the band seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely among disciples. And you can’t ask for much more than that.