Origin, I think, is fairly mid-range. There are lots of good songs, but there's not much variety. Not in the same league as Absolution or Black Holes. Origin sounds like a slew of brilliant rock songs. (And New Born, especially, is truly... astonishing!) They don't quite have the extra spice of A/BHR.
Not much variety? I totally disagree. It has the usual rockers, some great laid back mellow tunes, and I can't think of any other songs they have done that are like "Space Dementia" and "Darkshines." When it comes to the variety factor alone, OoS tops them all, IMO. 
Maybe I'm just more susceptible to superficial changes. I'm blinded by the aesthetic. To me, between Apocalypse Please, Time is Running Out, Endlessly and Stockholm Syndrome, Absolution demonstrates more versatility than the whole of Origin. BHAR takes it to the next level. City of Delusion, Supermassive Black Hole and Knights of Cydonia have got very distinct flavours.
Origin's more... they're all fairly heavy rockers, augmented with an ambitious serving of classical piano. There's a bit of a spanish thing towards the end of the album - Screenager & Darkshines, etc. - but I think it's more uniform in its colour. I'd put New Born, Bliss, Hyper Music, Plug-in Baby, Micro Cuts and possibly Citizen Erased into about the same box, and that's half the album. But again, I could just be finding myself blinded by the fairly superficial "ooh, this one has a fuzzy bassline, lovely" variety of production from Absolution onwards. Origin has a lot of different approaches to songwriting, and various structures. Actually, structurally it's one of the more ambitious, which is something I quite like about it. Being a mid-range Muse album is no bad thing, in my book.
Ohhh, I dunno! Undisclosed Desires is nigh-on R&B. Absolution sounds very classical in places, whereas Resistance is more eighties synthy...
What? 
I get the impression you're basing these descriptions on one song each (Butterflies & Hurricanes and Uprising). You're absolutely right that Muse have a ton of variety, but they always have done with the possible exception of OoS which was a bit more straightforward stylistically, and they are like that on each and every album. Each album has a couple of rockers, at least one song more classical in nature, one or two ballads, one or two pop songs.
I've kinda covered my attitude to it above with versatility, easily amused, etc., but Absolutionwise, I'd argue that Apocalypse Please, Ruled by Secrecy and Blackout are fairly heavily classically influenced, whereas Interlude is, natch, Adagio for Strings.
Obviously everyone is going to prefer some albums over others, that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to comments along the lines of "Black Holes was incredible but The Resistance is the biggest shitfest ever" (nothing specific in this thread, but it's the kind of comment you hear occasionally). Considering how similar the two albums are in so many regards, the breadth of this difference is what astonishes me and leads me to feel like the two albums are not being judged by the same criteria.
I think that's a fairly common symptom of fandom, mind. I do think Muse have got a particularly atrocious fanbase, but yeah, I'd agree with that. I think part of it is getting their hopes up. The new one's always the Scrappy that ruined it all and raped their uncle and didn't have enough guitar solos or a nineteen minute sequel to New Born and it ran over their cat and it was probably deliberate, too, if only Warner stopped meddling blah blah blah moan moan moan.
I may have spent too much time reading news comments on Muselive.
EDIT: Oh and I don't really get the UD=RnB thing (my brother said it as well). Sure the drum beat is somewhat lifted from that style of music, but I've honestly never heard an RnB song that sounds like UD. Although if there are any I'd love someone to point them out because I don't really have any RnB in my music collection but UD is one of my favourite Muse songs!
Ahhh, disagree! I think that it shares a lot more with R&B than any other genre. Not an indictment, I
love Undisclosed, me. But I'm surprised you can't hear it. The processed-sounding drums are a fair start, but on top of that there's the complete absence of any guitar, the sparseness of the bass and the sheer density of the synthesisers. Layer upon layer of production. The emphasis is on the vocals, too, to carry the melody. I'd say they're all hallmarks of R&B. I'm no expert on urban music, so I might be mixing genres, but it's not got much in common with rock music. Which is great! Nice. 'Citing. I can see why people would dislike it, but that's fine. All the more for me.
Topic: Black Holes and Revelations (Read 10711 times)
