Muse, Wembley Arena, London

As their No 1 album Absolution underlines, Muse do not lack ambition. Part Queen gone existential, part Rachmaninov rejigged for a cyberpunk audience, theirs is a wide-screen sound big on emotional intensity. The trio, who formed in Teignmouth, Devon, don't lack strong original material, but it wasn't until they covered Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" that one realised quite how good they were. Having tapped into Simone's joie de vivre, Muse recast the song to spectacular effect, contemporising it and making it their own.

Live, as on record, the band are all about minor keys, distorted basslines, caustic guitars and soaring melodies sung in a tremulous falsetto. There is a case for describing these youngsters as Radiohead Jnr, but Muse are heavier, more visceral and more fond of the neo-classical flourish.

The front man, Matt Bellamy, is stick-thin and sports a Gary Rhodes hairdo. In the time it takes for the openers "Apocalypse Please" and "New Born" to rocket past our ears, he has already demonstrated his virtuosity on two instruments. At the piano, he is all rapid-fire arpeggios and strident octaves; his guitar-playing is full of thrills, spills and heavily processed bellyaches.

His tender, sometimes vulnerable-sounding voice is pretty special, too, and not least on the austere, starkly beautiful love song "Sing for Absolution"; the absolution Bellamy seeks is seemingly tied in with guilt about ending a six-year relationship. As the moshpit ebbs and flows, I close my eyes and imagine the song in a different era with a different lyric and a more organic arrangement. Yes, it would have worked at Mussorgsky's funeral. Or as an alternative national anthem for Kurdistan, perhaps.

As the evening progresses, Muse's road crew begin to unpack an impressive and presumably expensive stage-show that reflects the band's status. "Space Dementia", for example, incorporates a fantastic backdrop of an expanding universe. Silhouetted against it, the bassist, Christ Wolstenholme, looks as though he's exploring the final frontier. There are also perspective-altering close-ups of Bellamy's piano-playing, his scurrying fingers trailing off into infinity.

Muse are excellent performers and can be thrilling live. But there are a couple of flies in the ointment. After an hour or more of angst-ridden bombast, one starts to long for some different colours. A song in a major key would be nice. Or maybe some of that Nina Simone joie de vivre. A second problem is the lack of interaction with the crowd between songs. In an alienating venue of this size, even such clichés as: "Hello, how are you?" can mean a lot to the punters in row Z.

The much-needed stylistic contrast does come eventually, when the band encore with "Blackout", a stately, waltz-time ballad that suggests a fondness of some of the slushier composers of the early 20th century. He sings it magnificently.

Touring to Sunday (www.muse.mu)