Muse

With crunching guitars and Thom Yorke-esque vocals, Muse could be enough to satisfy the suffering Radiohead fan who is tired of OK Computer but can't wait until May 2000 for another dose of depressing prog-rock. Muse is more that that, though--on their debut album, Showbiz, they display the potential to be a whole lot more than Radiohead clones.

"Sunburn," the album's opening track, blends a "Planet Telex"-style drum beat with a piano riff slightly reminiscent of Tori Amos to produce a passionate song that builds into a soaring epic. The next track, "Muscle Museum," features an exotic guitar sound that carries the song until it builds into another soaring epic. This seems to be Muse's downfall-apparently, living in a boring seaside hometown in southern England, they had little else to do but listen to Radiohead albums and pen songs that build into soaring epics.

Muse do mix it up at times, but with little success. "Unintended" is a sappy power ballad, and "Cave," with a Siamese Dream-era guitar sound, is a straightforward rocker that drips with melodrama and overproduction. The overproduction is especially disappointing considering that Showbiz's producer, John Leckie, has produced masterpieces by British giants The Stone Roses, Radiohead and the Verve.

The only song that matches the uniqueness of the opening tracks is "Uno," a hard rock tango (yes, tango!) that is, perhaps, one of the best songs of 1999. Frontman Matthew Bellamy sings, "You could have been number one/And we could've had so much fun/But you blew it away," with such passion that one wonders why he blows away the vibe of "Uno" by following it with the rubbish of "Sober," which is as bad as "Uno" is good.

Showbiz isn't going to affect anyone in the same way that OK Computer did, but it shows enough promise that it might prove to be Muse's Pablo Honey.

-By Robert Kelley