‘Plug In Baby’ to this entertaining biography of Muse. It’s a ‘Crying Shame’ that this revised and updated edition from 2014 is the only book available on one of the world’s biggest rock bands. Not only that, but the writing style was not ‘Bliss’, as it’s over-descriptive, littered with typos and seems to revel more in the band’s partying antics than in the music itself. The book is packed with ‘[Black Holes and] Revelations’ about the early years of Muse, from their humble beginnings as teenagers in Teignmouth, to the spectacle of their stadium concerts. Although it’s not a perfect read, generally I was ‘Feeling Good’ about it, because it arrived in the post from a second-hand seller around the same time that the new album The Wow! Signal came out, so I was definitely in the mood for Muse.

There are a lot of details in the book that I either didn’t know, or maybe I found out from the fan sites and messageboards which abounded in the early 2000s and had forgotten. I felt that the inclusion of interview transcripts with the band and management were mostly not valuable, as if they were particularly interesting, they were quoted or paraphrased in the main text. I liked that there references to how Muse used the internet to promote their work and also that the author gives context of other bands from the time, as although the book wasn’t written that long ago, things move on quickly, so it’s a sort of time capsule. The last album mentioned is ‘The Resistance,’ which isn’t discussed as much as the previous albums. I appreciated the author’s honesty about his opinion of Muse; when he first met them for an interview, he thought they were very boring, which was a strange contrast to their music! But they were soon to prove him wrong, and he met the band many times.

This is a good read for any fan of Muse, whether you’re reading in the mornings or ‘Knights [of Cydonia]’, although the writing style might make you ‘Agitated’.

Published by Omnibus Press, 2014.