quixotically ambitious music a global concern by touring longer, farther and harder than anybody else. They used to say yes to everything, working themselves to exhaustion and becoming, says Howard, "cynical and weird". Success has bought them a saner work-life balance. I meet Bellamy, Howard and bass-player Chris Wolstenholme separately during breaks in tour rehearsals at north London's Air Studios. When they made The Resistance each of them was living in a different country but this time they're all based in or near London, although Bellamy and Howard also have homes in Los Angeles. The singer is engaged to the actress Kate Hudson, which makes him future son-in-law to Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, and the couple have a one-year-old son, Bingham Hawn Bellamy, whose foetal heartbeat is sampled on the new album's dubstep-disco-U2 monster Follow Me. So by any measure 34-year-old Bellamy is a star, but he doesn't have the aura of one. His sharp features and stick-figure frame jangle with a wary, wiry intensity and he talks quickly, with many nervous giggles. If you didn't know what he did, you might assume he was a talented software programmer with a small fortune in Silicon Valley stock options. "On stage it's easy," he says. "There's something about the audience and the energy that takes you to this place. I have trouble being like that when I'm not on stage. I tend to be a bit quiet -- a touch avoidant, y'know? I think you do get what you visualise.