Muse shared their new single ‘Be With You’ today (March 19), and the verdict from fans has so far been fairly mixed.
The trio started to tease the single, the second from their upcoming album ‘The Wow! Signal’ earlier this month. It follows lead single ‘Unravelling’, which they shared in June last year.
The track begins with a grand church organ before introducing elements of electronica and erupting with a dose of guitar rock, with one fan on YouTube writing, “Muse doesn’t need a genre, they are a genre.”
Some looked back on previous Muse tracks. One said, “It’s like ‘Something Human’ and ‘Invincible’ had a baby!” while another fan wrote, “God, it’s like listening to a mix of different songs all in one. I’m loving it.”
One fan, on X (Twitter) wrote: ”The Best Band on the planet is back! What an intro and outro. I love your versatility and I can’t wait to hear the rest of the album. You changed my life in so many ways and I’ll always ‘Be With You’.”
Over on the r/Muse subreddit, however, people were less enthusiastic. One fan suggested that the Devon rockers “need to take more risks with their songwriting,” while another said: “I don’t get their new obsession with lightly dipping the tip into a riff and then immediately pulling out in the recent songs.”
“I just kept waiting for the song to hit, to scratch the itch so to speak, and it never happened. Just not exciting or memorable,” said another. “I’ve been following Muse for nearly 20 years now and refuse to give up hope yet, but I won’t say the thought has crossed my mind.”
One more opined, “This is so bad. Coming over ‘Unravelling’ I was so hoping for the same heavy vibe.”
Both ‘Be With You’ and ‘Unravelling’ will appear on the follow-up to 2022’s ‘Will Of The People’, which is set for release on June 26 via Warner. Pre-order/pre-save here.
According to a press release, ‘The Wow! Signal’ takes its title from one of the most compelling interstellar mysteries of the last century – “a powerful 72-second radio burst detected in 1977 originating from the constellation Sagittarius with a bandwidth and intensity that suggested a possible extraterrestrial source”.
“The astronomer who discovered the anomaly famously circled the now-iconic sequence ‘6EQUJ5’ and wrote ‘WOW!’ on the printout beside it – giving the signal its name and cementing its place in scientific and pop-culture lore,” it adds.
The record is said to explore “a mix of cosmic mystery, existential hope, and the exhilarating possibility of contact with something far greater than ourselves”.
Last year, bassist Chris Wolstenholme discussed the band’s future and suggested that they were thinking about a new album. “I think we’re gonna start work on the next record fairly soon,” he revealed.
“When you finish touring an album, and [when] the band has been around a bit longer, the gaps between albums get a little bit bigger. I don’t think we can be banging out new albums every two years like we used to,” he added. “But it gives you that opportunity to reset a little bit and think about what’s gonna happen going forward.”