Album cover art for Absolution XX Anniversary by MusePhoto Credit: Apple Music
On November 17th, English rock band Muse released Absolution XX Anniversary tocommemorate the twentieth anniversary of their third studio album, Absolution. The twenty sixtrack album includes Absolution’s original tracklist plus live and demo versions of songs fromthe album.The biggest difference between the 2003 and 2023 Absolution tracklist are the slight alterationsin production and engineering. To the casual music listener, the updated production of each songwouldn’t stand out. When listened to with a quality pair of headphones (for this review, I usedJBL Tune 710BT over the ears headphones) the various nuances of the updated songs areenhanced.The best example of places where production is enhanced is on the track, ‘Butterflies andHurricanes’ when the backing orchestra kicks in before the piano solo. The enhancedengineering on the song allows for the drama of the orchestra to flow from the left to right
headphones. In the original recording of ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ the orchestra wasn’t heardas well in that specific part of the song.A personal favorite on the album, ‘The Small Print’ received an enhancement in the acousticsdepartment. Originally, the percussion sounded flat on the song, without any sort of resonance inthe sound. Now, the drums hit even harder in a way that doesn’t drag the song down in any way.Interestingly, the band decided to include a vocals and piano only version of the song, ‘Sing ForAbsolution’ and a vocals, strings and piano version of ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes.’ Without thepercussion in these versions, there’s an underlying feeling of impending doom added to eachsong that wasn’t there previously.The band similarly enhanced the production of their 2001 album Origin of Symmetry for itstwentieth anniversary with Origin of Symmetry (XX Anniversary RemiXX). As a longtime Musefan, this release was a well anticipated treat.