A Weekend In Manchester / Muse Live!

Hello you beautiful people! as you can see I'm quite chirpy this evening and this is all down to having a fabulous, amazing time up in Manchester. So for my birthday back in January you can see everything what I got here. I was treated to a pair of Muse tickets from Sam and a stay at the Crowne Plaza for one night from his parents I am aware I'm a very lucky girl. Muse have been a favourite long loved band of mine for many years and I was very lucky to get tickets to their sold out Drones tour. This was also my first day I've booked off work since Christmas and it was much needed.

So the plan was to get up nice and early like a typical friday morning that I'm used to for work and get the 9:45am train, I like getting the train as it gives me a chance to catch up on some reading. I'm currently reading 'The Art of Being Normal' which is part of the Girl Gang Book Club #GGbookclub go check this out over on Sarah's twitter @sarahs_chapter. We arrive in Manchester at around 12:30pm and head to the hotel to check in, the room was stunning and we was also left with a nice little sample of the one and only This Works Sleep Spray on the bed which I got all excited about. I have the full size version of this at home and I love it, works wonders to help you drift off. We freshen up and head out to explore Manchester which mainly involves me dragging Sam around shopping.

For my birthday/christmas I saved my money and vouchers especially for this trip to make it cheaper for me but also there are shops/make up counters which I can't go to here in Nottingham. So I went to the famous Arndale shopping centre as we aren't a far walk from there and did a bit of shopping which I will do a separate haul post about so look out for that in the next few days. We had some lunch before we started shopping as we got hungry from all the traveling and we was still full so we decided to skip dinner but if I was hungry I would of eaten at the Hard Rock Cafe, as I love these and like to visit them all seeing as the one in Nottingham shut down years ago. What's everyone's favourite hard rock cafe?.

Before heading back to the room we went into the Cafe North for a quick refreshment, I had this yummy smoothie as I just needed something to keep me going and then we then headed back to the room to freshen up and head down to the Manchester Arena, which was again only a short walk to the arena and that's when my excitement kicked in that I'm finally going to be seeing Muse! ahhh

The show kicks off with the support act Nothing But Thieves appear on stage, if you've never heard this band before I highly recommend them if you're into rock music as they are similar to Muse/Catfish and the bottlemen. I am very familiar with this band and I have there album so I was looking forward to seeing them live and oh my god what a perform, Conor the lead singer has an amazing voice almost up there next to Matt Bellamy. They played 7 songs from their album Nothing But Thieves here is the setlist Itch, Painkiller, Wake Up Call, Excuse Me, If I Get High, Trip Switch, Ban All The Music.

As you can see from the pictures this isn't just your standard square stage against the wall set up, Muse have decided to put the stage in the centre of the room with two runways either side for Matt and Chris to strut around and give the audience a closer look at them playing.

After an amazing performance from Nothing But Thieves and I still can't get over how great they were live and Conor's voice is incredible, Muse finally appear on stage and kick things off with a bang and play their single 'Psycho' which then had everyone going crazy and moshing, this is a heavy rock song with a great bassline riff. Next they performed their latest single 'Reapers' which has a great solo intro which I was thrilled about seeing it played live as I appreciate this as a guitar player myself.

I won't go into massive detail and talk you through every song that got played that night because I think this post is long enough don't you? so I'm going to talk about the highlights of this night and the first place to start, which is of course to talk about the drones. Drones is the name of this tour and Muse's new album so it would be silly not to have drones flying around which was pretty impressive, they also had a giant plane flying around which reminded me very much of Pink Floyd The Wall.

Now this is the most impressive thing that stuck to me the most as I was blown away by this, before the show started we got told we are allowed to take pictures and record videos but we must turn off the flash as this would spoil the effects from the projectors, so silk like material rolled down hanging above the runways and around the circular stage which then acted as tv's so we could see motion graphics and close ups of the band playing but when Muse performed their song 'The Handler' Matt and Chris were stood on either sides of the runway whilst a giant robotic hand was shown on the projector with strings coming down to make it look like Matt and Chris were puppets and the strings followed them as they walked, I thought this was very cool. Another cool moment was when Matt and Chris became a hologram on the projectors it was all very futuristic.

The centre stage spun round very slowly so everyone got a chance to see the whole band and during 'Starlight' giant balloons filled with stars got bounced around which was a nice touch. According to the guinness book of world records Matt Bellamy is famously known for breaking a guitar or two whilst performing live and I actually got to witness this, another thing I noticed which makes them different to other bands is they perform a show and don't interact with the audience by telling you stories or thank yous after songs, they really get into the performance.

Muse have now easily become my all time favourite band I've seen live due to the commitment they really put into giving the audience a show, I enjoyed every minute of it and was full of surprises with the amount of visual effects that was constantly being shown. For those that are interested here is the setlist, Drones, Psycho, Reapers, Bliss, Dead Inside, The 2nd Law: Isolated Systems, The Handler, Supermassive Black Hole, Prelude, Starlight, Feeling Good, Munich Jam, Madness, Map of the Problematique, JFK, Interlude, Hysteria, Time Is Running Out, Uprising, The Globalist, Drones, Take a Bow, Mercy, Knights of Cydonia.

We then headed back to our room and I had never wanted a shower and bed so much as all my energy had completely drained and the hotel bed was so comfy. In the morning we packed all our things and headed out for breakfast, we found this american diner called 'Infamous Diner' and ordered two five stack of pancakes with a banana milkshake, they were delicious and very filling as I couldn't finish it but felt bad because they tasted so good. Before we headed to the train station I wanted to have a quick stop around Selfridges as I still had some birthday money left over, I only had £25 so I went to the Nars stand and bought my first Nars product which you can see in my haul post which is coming soon.

I will be going back up to Manchester in June so if there are any places/shops that you would recommend please leave them in the comments below.