Gig Review - Muse, Razorlight - Paris, Palais Omnisports de Bercy 14/12/06***** For every Arctic Monkeys there's a Razorlight, sadly. After seeing this shower live I can't think of a single good thing to say about them, they are a poor band, their songs are derivative of so many other bands in the Brit indy scene, and they are desperately dull. Frontman Johnny Borrel looks as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world than in front of 15,000 excitable French teenagers (plus the odd middle aged Brit), he looks pale, ill and uninterested, seldom have I seen a front man with so little charisma and drive. The rest of the band plod through a set of instantly forgettable songs which for reasons totally beyond my comprehension receive warm applause from the gathered Parisians, don't they get much live music here in the French capitol, are they really this easily pleased ? Razorlight are a pub rock band struck lucky, some A&R man got pissed and signed them up, they are without charm, stage presence and talent, awful, truly awful. Now, some nights you want to go out to some grotty dive (the Cockpit in Leeds for example) and see some lowly garage punk band take the night by the skin of their teeth, on other nights, it's nice to be blown away by the sheer majesty of it all. Muse fall in to the latter category, possessed of all subtle self restraint of Pink Floyd on a limitless budget, their stage show is grandiose, over the top, dazzling and utterly wonderful. Matt Bellamy and company open with the opening track from the new album Black Holes & Revelations, Tale A Bow. It's a song written to be the opener to something wildly over the top, and serves it's purpose perfectly, it winds up and up in a gathering crescendo laying the foundations for the histrionic musical epics to come. Drummer Chris Wolstenholme's kit emerges from a giant diamond screen covered pod, and with a vast screen filling the stage rear these provide a stunning visual display throughout the show. We are treated to a good long set tonight, Sunburn from their first album, four tracks each from Symmetry and Absolution, then almost all of the current album. The French kids go wild for everything, it's not really moshable music but they make a damn fine attempt at it. Although Bellamy isn't always overly chatty at gigs, he does say the odd word or two tonight, sometimes even in French, and Wolstenholme takes a percussion break every so often to talk to the fans. At one point he asks everyone to show a light, if you did this ten years ago everyone would have a lighter, now all the kids hold up their mobile phones adding a creepy, cyberpunk look that provides the perfect backdrop for Bellamy's often paranoid lyrics. Giant robots march across the screens for Supermassive Black Hole, we fly at warp speed through starfields (of course) for Starlight, then the lights dim and a single blue light illuminates Bellamy as he ascends to the piano platform and plays the intro to Feeling Good, finishing the song with a Muse twist by singing the final verse and chorus though a megaphone for some extra weirdness. There are two encores, including Stockholm Syndrome with a gonzo, distorted ending. The second and final encore is the last track of the new album, and if Take A Bow was written to open concerts, Knights Of Cydonia was created to close them, and as the riff and thunder finishes, Bellamy stalks off as his now trademark abandoned guitar screams a howl of feedback long after the band have left the stage.