BULLETT

I’m not really hearing the connection between this new Muse track, “Madness,” and U2, as Spin writes today. Is it because both bands’ best work is long since in the past?

“Madness” is more of a straight Achtung Baby move, fusing melodramatic rock balladry with current electronic trends in much the way U2 started to do on that massively successful album, which turned 20 last year. Matthew Bellamy’s husky, falsetto-prone croon even sounds like Bono’s here, and some Edge-like guitar shimmer arrives toward the end of the song.

If you say so. The track doesn’t come alive until about 3 minutes in, which is about 2:59 too long to grab a listener’s attention on the internet, so I guess the lazy among us will never find out the ending. Instead of that dilettantism, I’ll be listening to a proper-electronic record from Manchester’s Holy Other, who are streaming their debut LP Held. It’s a nightscape of dimly lit streets and clattering urban noise-pollution percussion, that somehow still envelopes the listener like a gauzy blanket. A homeless guy’s blanket, sure, but still.

Or else the quirky romantic computerized romance of AlunaGeorge’s “Your Drums, Your Love” (via Noisey) a song, I think, about a young woman’s love affair with a drum machine? Could be me misreading it. On a song like this the two are more closely related that you might think.