Slowly, Yanks take notice

Throughout Europe, the English rock band Muse has achieved an almost godlike status -- wowing the media, selling out arenas and racking up awards for its latest record, “Absolution.” Having conquered that continent with its artfully orchestrated, hard-charging rock, you’d think the trio would be peeved that the U.S. hasn’t entirely caught on, but lead singer Matt Bellamy enjoys the challenge.

“It’s the most exciting time to be in a band -- when people are discovering you,” Bellamy said during a recent interview from Orlando, Fla., a city Muse was playing for the first time. “In the sense of touring, you’re going out there and playing to crowds that have never seen you before. It’s nice to try and win them over.”

Tonight, Muse will play the second of successive sold-out shows at the Wiltern LG. Saturday, the group will perform as part of KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas, sharing the bill with Interpol, the Killers, Modest Mouse and other modern rock acts, some of which have toiled away for years but are only now getting commercial attention.

Count Muse among those who’ve only recently broken out. Rounded out with Dominic Howard on drums and Chris Wolstenholme on bass, the group has been together since 1994 but massive success came with its third and latest record, released on Warner Bros. Records in March. The timing, apparently, was finally right for the group’s sound, which marries the instrumentation of classical music with the drive of rock and metal, and for the album’s message, which many listeners heard as a welcome commentary on world events.

Despite hit singles titled “Time Is Running Out” and “Hysteria,” Bellamy, 26, says the record is not consciously about current events, though it is about endings. News reports about the war may have “conjured up biblical ideas, and religious themes started to get talked about,” he said, but the album more specifically addresses his emotions about the end of his six-year romance and the band’s yearlong break from touring after five nearly nonstop years on the road.

“I tried to sing about hysterical emotions, or moments of panic or fear,” he said. “The songs were coming from a half negative point of view, but also trying to find what makes you want to carry on throughout those things.”

Carrying on in the face of negativity is, after all, how the band was born -- out of boredom living in the small seaside town of Teignmouth. A former holiday resort gone bust, there were few job opportunities and even less to do for teens, who passed their time drinking cider on the beach and, eventually, forming bands.

Bellamy was 14 when he got together with Howard and two other musicians to play “experimental aggressive” rock, intentionally de-tuning his guitar and breaking the strings.

Two years later, when two members abandoned their instruments for skateboards, Wolstenholme replaced them, and Muse was born.

The band takes its name from a local rumor that there was some kind of spirit, or muse, hanging around Teignmouth prompting its youth to make music and invent other ways of entertaining themselves. Out of nowhere, it seemed, eight groups had formed -- enough to rent out sports halls and throw parties.

Muse was not the best known of the bunch, perhaps because the group was instrumental, “with the odd vocal here and there,” said Bellamy, who had yet to find the powerfully emotive voice he sings with today.

It’s Bellamy’s desperate, almost pleading vocals that make Muse one of the more dramatic rock acts to come along in recent years, but in 1994 his “kind of female sounding” singing style was not at all en vogue. Grunge was in, and with it the raspy sort of screams favored by Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder.

“I always liked singers like Nina Simone -- a more bluesy, soulful style of singing, a very expressive way of singing -- but I never thought it could work inside what we did as Muse at the time,” Bellamy said.

His opinion changed after seeing a Jeff Buckley concert: “He was the first person I saw who did a vocal style that was high. He did a lot of falsetto stuff that I felt I could do.”

Buckley inspired Bellamy to embrace his “female” singing style, but that isn’t the comparison that’s ordinarily drawn. Bellamy’s voice, and therefore the band, is more often compared to Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. Both bands embrace electronic flourishes, and the vocals are at times startlingly similar, but the two groups are, in fact, quite different. Where Radiohead’s music is arty, Muse is, at times, almost metal. Nevertheless, it’s the Radiohead parallel that seems to have slowed a full U.S. embrace of the band -- some would say unfairly.

“I think it’s just [Bellamy’s] voice. It’s a totally different style. There’s something about Muse that’s a little heavier,” said KROQ music director Matt Smith, who’s been playing the Muse single “Time Is Running Out” since March. “Same thing happened with Coheed and Cambria. ‘That guy sounds like Rush.’ I think [Bellamy] sounds like [Yorke], but I just kind of got over it.”

American audiences, it seems, are getting over it too. Smith said the single wasn’t an instant success with KROQ listeners, but the station kept playing it because his staff liked the band.

At one point, “Time Is Running Out” grew into KROQ’s most requested song. The station is now playing the group’s follow-up, “Hysteria.”

It’s through touring, rather than radio airplay, however, that Muse has won its core following, which it hopes to expand over the next few nights in L.A.

“In terms of how we’ve become known, it’s always been through touring and going live,” Bellamy said. “The good thing about that is we really feel it. When you become well known through something like radio play or MTV, you don’t get a chance to feel it as much. I like that we’ve built up slower. We’ve got a lot to look forward to.”

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Muse

Where: The Wiltern LG, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 tonight

Price: $25

Info: (213) 380-5005

Also: With Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, Modest Mouse, Jimmy Eat World, Snow Patrol and others as part of the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas

When: 4 p.m. Saturday

Where: Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City

Price: $60

Info: (818) 622-4660