Muse

Forget the Grammys, Muse deserve an Oscar for The Resistance -- an album filled with more drama and romance than a year's worth of Best Picture nominees. It could easily score a new rendition of 1984, and the novel itself gets ample nods in "Uprising," "Resistance" and "United States of Eurasia." Even the arrangements are as ambitiously and diligently plotted out as the conspiracy theories referenced: glimmers of Queen, Radiohead, U2 and Floyd seamlessly fuse with opera arias ("I Belong to You") and classical epics (do not miss the remarkable three-part "Exogenesis" symphony).

Many art rockers have symphonic pretensions, but it takes gumption to compose a
"symphony." Enter Muse: The British trio's fifth album closes with "Exogenesis: Symphony,"
a three-part suite full of grandiose orchestral swells and lyrical koans like "Why are we?
Who are we?" Muse's humongous cresting and tumbling songs have earned them a massive
cult following, along with criticism that the band sounds a little too much like its... More >