Muse's grandiose rock fills the Wachovia Center

Tuesday's dazzling concert spectacle at the well-attended Wachovia Center proved it: Muse is one of those wide-screen rock acts born to play the big stage.

Through five studio albums, the English trio's sweeping songs - replete with bombastic twists and colorful turns, operatically baleful vocals, and snazzy guitar solos - are ambitious rock-pop tone paintings wrought with large brushstrokes.

Yet what has made Muse a regular "best live band" award-winner, selling out stadiums abroad - if not (yet) here - is vocalist-guitarist-keyboardist-composer Matthew Bellamy, wailing masterfully and scurrying about the stage to kick and knee-slide as he crisply plays guitar with maximum body English. Bassist Chris Wolstenholme and energetic drummer Dominic Howard complement him, but it's Bellamy who has become one of the most prodigiously commanding front men in rock.

Muse performed 90 minutes amid lasers and smoke plumes, favoring last year's Stateside breakthrough album, The Resistance. Three video towers hung over the stage, and corresponding square lifts on the stage occasionally raised the band members high up.

From the recent record's "Uprising" through the previous album's "Knights of Cydonia," the blend of classical and classic rock (Queen a clear inspiration) and updated tech-rock (an Ultravox reference is due) was translated into living art, Bellamy holding long, dramatic notes, some in falsetto. Earlier vocal comparisons to Thom Yorke should keep fading; the Radiohead front man's voice isn't nearly as powerful.

The show openers, Silversun Pickups, scored with a generous set in a venue far larger than previous Philly stages they've played. Those included Johnny Brenda's and the pre-fire Five Spot back in Old City, where the L.A. group played in 2004 (a fact that underscores the folly of their Grammy nomination as best new artist - this year).

Comparisons of this S.P.-initialed quartet to Smashing Pumpkins are fair, given singer-guitarist Brian Aubert's nasal tone, which sometimes recalls that of the Pumpkins' Billy Corgan. But Aubert's delivery is less strident, and his guitar work less flashy.

Aubert's hooky guitar pick-strums worked surprisingly well in the cavernous arena. Irresistible tunes like "Substitution" from last year's Swoon and the 2006 hit "Lazy Eye" worked nicely, buoyed by drummer Chris Guanlao's peppy beats and Nikki Monninger's melodious bass throb.