Chris interview - It's Ideas that count most

"The British trio Muse has, for some reason, been called a prog band, as if the group worships at the altar of Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Bassist Chris Wolstenholme doesn't understand it, either.

"I kind of find it funny, really," he says from Atlanta on a tour that stops Tuesday in Storrs. "I'm not quite sure where it comes from. You listen to bands like Pink Floyd and you think, well, that's prog, and I can't really see the pattern to that kind of thing."

True, the band does have a few songs that Wolstenholme calls "six-minute, seven-minute monsters that go off a little bit and are a bit more experimental," but Muse isn't as concerned with complex time signatures and flashy instrumental virtuosity as it is with conveying ideas in the songs.

"I think some of the best lyrics are when someone is singing something and you feel like they could be singing about you," he says. "It's a feeling you share."

The band's feelings, particularly on the most recent album, last year's "Absolution", are darker. Singer and lyricist Matthew Bellamy dabbles in the-end-is-near apocalyptic imagery and the music is rich, dense and layered. The album came together after the band took a break for all of 2002, which followed five years of near-constant touring.

"It was quite nice, actually, because it kind of reminds us at the end of the day that the three of us were old friends from school," Wolstenholme says. "It was almost like a whole getting-to-know each other period again, because the way you are at home and the way you are on the road can be quite different."

The band, which also includes drummer Dominic Howard, found a renewed creativity when the members reconvened in a London rehearsal space in 2003.

"It felt like stuff was just pouring out," the bassist says. "I think it was the first time we had recorded an album where we had a lot of songs left over and we actually got to the point where we felt like we had too much. ... It's a nice problem to have, when you've got to whittle it down to 12 or 13 songs."

Muse formed in 1997 in a small seaside town called Teignmouth, where Wolstenholme says there wasn't much of a music scene. That allowed the band to develop at its own pace outside the glare of a big-city hype machine, and though its achievements have brought a higher profile for Muse, the bassist says the band pays no attention to the pressure that often accompanies success.

"I don't think you can really call it pressure," he says. "It's a job that I find it difficult to moan about, because I've had [expletive] jobs in the past, all of us have. There are negatives to being in a band ... but at the end of the day, there are millions of kids that would love to be in a rock band, you know?"

Muse performs Tuesday at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on the University of Connecticut campus in Storrs. Razorlight opens.
Tickets for the 8 p.m. show are $15 for the public and $5 for UConn students. Information: 860-486-4226.

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