"Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited." --A Clockwork Orange

Muse's Absolution evokes a futuristic feeling throughout the album, with a firm foundation in its classical roots. The driving, often melodic bass lines, combined with prominent arpeggi in the backgrounds, give the album a desperately nihilistic quality, acquiescing to the idea that no matter what they do, they won't change anything, so why not have fun? I certainly had fun listening to this album.

My only problem with the album (and, indeed, the group itself) is the lead singer's enunciation (or lack thereof). He has a tendency to start phrases and longer notes in a pinched manner, and then flair out in a somewhat whiny fashion. The result is something like this: in "Hysteria," instead of "I want it now...", the listener gets something resembling "I want it neeow..." This would sound great if the band were fronted by a cat, but seeing as Matthew Bellamy is a real, live, human Englishman, it would be great if he could pronounce the beginnings of his phrases like one.

Despite this one criticism, I enjoyed Absolution. I felt a quote from Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange served as an appropriate title due to the "desperately nihilistic" nature of the album I described before. I can positively say this album is not a lure to a rape, a beating, or a murder; however, it is an invitation to all the young devotchkas and chellovecks to slooshy a right horrorshow pop-disk.

(Translations for my Nadsat use borrowed from A Clockwork Orange can be found at http://soomka.com/nadsat.html)

"The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway." --Heart of Darkness

I've started this blog with a mission: to listen to one album per day, and record my thoughts, feelings, and impressions.

The albums to which I will listen are albums I already have in my iTunes library. I will listen to albums alphabetically, to ensure I listen to every album I currently own. I will listen only to complete LP's--random singles and EP's contained in my library will not be included in this project. New albums that I will inevitably purchase during the course of this marathon review will be placed in the alphabetical "queue," as it were. If I have passed an album's place in the alphabet, I will listen to it immediately, and continue the next day where I left off the day before. In keeping with the iTunes system of organization, albums beginning with numbers and symbols will be at the end of the listening order.

Let there be no pretense about this endeavor: this is nothing more than intellectual masturbation for me. The albums I will listen to are by no means new (though many of them will be new to me), and I will not be taking into account what the critics have already said. My "reviews" will be purely my opinion on each album.

Now that I've made my opening move, I encourage you to give me your feelings on my work and to listen to these albums for yourself. Tomorrow I'll be listening to Muse's Absolution.

Enjoy!