Muse > Radiohead

All those 10+++!!!+ZOMG!! reviews for Radiohead reissues over at Pitchfork can so kiss my grits. My take on Radiohead is: great through OK Computer, they are free to do what they want even if it's tripe, should have done one more LP of song songs before losing the plot...you know, the usual. That new quasi-instrumental "These Are My Twisted Words," I'm fairly sure, is cribbed from a shitty jam my friends and I had in our Stewart St. bunker ca. 1997. The "...Harry Patch" thing is an old Montovani track with Thom singing over the top on his first hearing of accompanying music.

Then you have Muse, who have oft been derided for singer Matt's admittedly very Yorke-y vocal stylings. And, yes, they do tend toward bombastic proggy shit, sometimes veering close to Guitar-Shoppe twaddle. The a-holes at Pitchfork snarkily give new Muse song "United States of Eurasia" a 2.6 or whatever. And it IS stupid, to a great degree. The "deep" lyrics, the embarrassing-yet-awesome Queen rips...dumb. Then the tacked-on piano solo, all Chopin-y, is silly, yet...beautiful. There, I said it. Plus it reminds me of "Claire du Lune."

So, yes, Muse deserves credit for writing actual songs.

I've had Muse v. Radiohead on my to-write list for about three weeks. I had a lot more to say about this, but stopped caring about 100 words ago. Did you notice?