Well, well. It appears Coldplay has a million b-sides and singles as well. Can the world handle it?

Their new album, Mylo Xyloto, is due out in the US on October 25, so I’ll gather their songs and release a playlist once we’ve all had a chance to be thoroughly disappointed by that.

Yes, it’s another non-MUSE post. We’re not, like, exclusive or anything.

I assume it’s coincidence that Arcade Fire’s studio albums have been released in alphabetical order. Self-titled EP: 2003. Funeral: 2004. Neon Bible: 2007. The Suburbs: 2010. That works for me, since I generally use Windows Media Player to listen to my music, and despite displaying the year of any album or song, it offers no option to sort by that field. In some cases I’ve prepended the year to album titles in my library so that they display in the “correct” chronological order I prefer. Since I didn’t have to do that with Arcade Fire, buying tracks from singles releases unintentionally changed – and, in my opinion, enhanced – my listening experience.

Until just recently, the only two Arcade Fire songs I had that were not already on an EP or full-length album were “Broken Window” (the b-side of “Keep the Car Running”) and “Surf City Eastern Bloc” (the b-side of “No Cars Go”). Both primary singles are from the album Neon Bible. Since the names of the primary singles are the “album” names for the singles releases, “Broken Window” slots in alphabetically just before Neon Bible and “Surf City Eastern Bloc” just after.

Both b-sides and both primary singles deal with oppression, abduction, escape and hiding. Other Neon Bible tracks encourage flight and express fear of capture. “Ocean of Noise” and “Windowsill” depict fascism as a rising tide of water, with the latter song making clear what country the narrator is singing about: “I don’t wanna live in America no more.” Call it paranoia, call it overreaction to the Patriot Act and War on Terror – clearly there was concern over the direction the country was taking.

Why don’t “Broken Window” and “Surf City Eastern Bloc” fit on the album, then? Quite simply, the themes are the same, but the timeline and geography are off. “Surf City Eastern Bloc” explicitly references Berlin and 1984, with a beach vacation serving as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the freedom on the western side of the Iron Curtain. “Broken Window” isn’t as specific, but is about abductions that have already happened, as opposed to the fear of a future totalitarian state in America. It does present its stories as “Deep in the past, far in a future time,” even though the past tense is consistently used.

Keeping both b-sides off of Neon Bible could be said to strengthen the album’s message of warning. That case is far easier to make for “Surf City Eastern Bloc”; listeners might hear it and dismiss all of Neon Bible as not applicable today, since we after all defeated the Soviet menace and freed all of Eastern Europe with the sheer awesomeness of America. “Broken Window” could slide in more easily, acting as a demonstration of how innocent people have been disappeared by political opponents all over the world in many eras, but finding the right spot for it would have been a challenge.

Bookending Neon Bible with these two songs allows them to be heard separately, but still in the same listening session, as the album. They add so much to its chilling atmosphere that I wish they could have been included, but I understand the decision to pair them with singles instead.

I have since learned of the single “Cold Wind” and a couple cover songs released by the band – while checking its discography for this post, actually. Although it’s of the Funeral era and uses air rather than water as its metaphor of choice, “Cold Wind” speaks to a lot of the same unease that informs Neon Bible. I hate to break up the album’s sequence, but, shoot, just this once:

Listen to Neon Bible + b-sides via Grooveshark.

That’s right, you can finally listen to Simulacrum online, for free, without jumping around on MUSE‘s Web site. There’s a big ol’ link on the playlist page that looks just like this:

Listen free via Grooveshark

Confession: I sometimes listen to music other than MUSE. Recently I found Sound of Guns, a band that’s released a ton of singles and EPs compared to their one and only full-length album. Rather than listen to the same songs multiple times on different collections, I of course arranged the b-sides into an album.

1. Knots
2. Rack and Ruin
3. Bottled in Birkenhead
4. Breakwater
5. Untitled*
6. Gallantry
7. Dead Sea Scrolls
8. Silent Canon
9. Statues

“Untitled” there is actually the hidden track at the end of “Gallantry,” so some basic audio editing is required. A couple songs could stand to have a few seconds of silence trimmed as well, so download Audacity, hit up Amazonfor MP3s and enjoy.

UPDATE: You can now listen online for free via Grooveshark!

Oh hai, three obviously audible clicks toward the end of my CD and WAV copies of “Coma.” Why are you not in my MP3 and FLAC files, and why have I never noticed you before?

It’s being reported that Matthew Bellamy and girlfriend Kate Hudson are expecting a baby.

Names? I suggest Nishe Minimum Hudson Bellamy for a girl and Jimmy Kane Hudson Bellamy for a boy.

…that Matt Bellamy and Dominic Howard were hanging out in my house. The mood was less, “Holy crap, we could have an awesome treble-heavy concert right now” and more, “Now where did I leave that autographed photo you guys sent me? Shoot.” I remember looking in the printer/scanner, but it wasn’t there.

Perhaps I’m just anxious about the somewhat cryptic CD I sent to the boys. I’m sure if it actually sparks their interest they’ll find their way here.

Well, not “hit,” really, since that would imply distribution, and I’m sure that would require some kind of official permission. But for you musically talented people out there, make a MUSE song your own with their downloadable sheet music.

The 49 available songs are mostly from The Resistance, Black Holes and Revelations and Absolution. Newer ones cost $3.00, with “classics” from more than three years ago priced at $2.00.

Or you could just listen to listen to “Sunburn” over and over until you know it and then record your own version. Whatever.

Same as #2 but with a brighter background.

Sometimes I doubt my common-sense opinion that releasing b-sides would be in not only our, but in MUSE‘s own interest. Sure, more album sales, but those tracks are already released, albeit in limited supply, on various EPs and singles. Wouldn’t consolidating those releases end up hurting sales of the old records?

But a recent NPR piece on reissues has me more confident than ever that Simulacrum deserves a place on the shelves:

Keith Caulfield is the Senior Chart Manager at Billboard magazine. He says record labels are looking for anything to prop up album sales, which have already plunged 17 percent this year.

“Basically anything to motivate the consumer, to go out and repurchase an album, which is kind of what it comes down to,” says Caulfield.

There used to be a time when the wait for a remastered or bonus-filled release took years, but now, reissues of popular albums have become so commonplace that they often happen just months after an album’s first release.

New art, new compilation, heck, remaster everything if you want. Release them! Sign the petition here.