BEST OF '09: MUSE - THE RESISTANCE

I've been talking about Muse for a while - I was turned on to them by a pretty high up guy at VH1 who loves prog-rock. I'd read about them in some of the British magazines, but it was really their last album, Black Holes and Revelations, that really hooked me. The new album, The Resistance, is also really great. I think 2010 will be their year. They were on both Twilight soundtracks, helping to introduce them to a huge audience, they opened for U2 and it just seems that the stars are alligning for them.

As I often say on The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick (on SIRIUS XM's OutQ channel) after I explain the context of something: "none of that would matter if the songs weren't so great." Muse has great songs, and they are super ambitious about how they record them. I am pretty sure that they have been pretty open about being fans of Rush and Yes and great progressive rock bands like that. That takes balls, man! And when I say progressive rock, I don't mean that they have to have Roger Dean covers and multi-part songs... it means that they are open to influences outside of rock, including classical, and they just don't care what the mainstream (or the indie mainstream) is doing. Muse should really be proud of The Resistance, and it will be interesting to see how big they get in 2010.

Other Best of '09 albums: Bob Dylan's Together Through Life , The Cocktail Slippers' Saint Valentine's Day Massacre , Rancid's Let The Dominoes Fall, N.A.S.A.'s Spirit Of Apollo , Levon Helm's Electric Dirt , Buddy & Julie Miller's Written In Chalk, Ben Harper & Relentless7's White Lies For Dark Times, The Dead Weather's Horehound.