During these difficult economic times, it's get harder and harder to get a big bang for your buck, but the Muse concert more than filled the bill, and you walked away feeling like you got a hefty refund!
I was, however, thoroughly unamused by SilverSun Pickups, who played to a sparse audience (that was the first clue that they were expendable) and whose setlist could not be more monotonous, homogeneous or bland. Only the last song had folks sit up and take notice, at least the ones who were not outside buying beers, popcorn, pizza or taking a pee-break.
MUSE, on the other hand, from start to finish, put on what, even one leg into March, could well be THE show to have attended in 2010 in Toronto.
I can't remember ANY show in my 52 year old's memory where sound and light-show were so perfectly syncronized, and where a carefully calculated Jenga-stacked set list built up such a momentum as to conclude in the orgasmic experience one can only dream about. Say what you might about pandering to the popular, the set list, largely derived from the latest album, The Resistance, even so incorporated earlier songs which were familiar and to which the audience sang like a Greek chorus. The momentum of the concert included an intermission shorter than a pee-break and bulldozed on to a rousing climax.
I wondered during the Silversun Pickups flat-soda opening why people were sitting BEHIND the stage, but all was revealed when the curtain rose, so to speak, and it was clear that this was going to be a 360 affair. The back-lit scrims depicted a Discovery Channel array of themes from the Matrix through war clips, nature scenes and molecular science. The entire colour pallet was use in the light show (except during Unnatural Selection, which was in black/white with a smidge of red -- which made the song climactic by sheer distinctive lack-of-color) and the perfectly sync-ed strobes are making me still see pink elephants this morning.
A momentous concert, one well wortht the dosh, and hell, I'd go see 'em again, I should live so long
Oh yeah. I bought these tix for my 22 year old son's birthday. He liked the show. What did he care? It wasn't on HIS dime!