Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Placebo
Label: Vertigo Records
Released: 2013
Length: 23:56
Rating: 4/5
When the name Placebo comes up, the gears of my time machine shift back to the nineties, when a pale, made-up singer with a rather anemic hermaphroditic look was carving out his slice of the pie on TV screens, fronting a pretty bizarre trio. For a long time I couldn’t tell whether they were driven by real musical inspiration or just a passing obsession with bizarre freaks. After the debut Placebo and Without You I’m Nothing, and also the record Cruel Intentions, the London oddballs proved that the recipe of androgynous, feminine vocals, greasy distortion and hypnotic repetition has enough juice to firmly place Placebo among the bands who outgrew the gravitational field of the one-hit moments of their garage drama-skit, and that their existential flame burns longer than a single flash. Still, because of Molko’s flirtation with medication and his stubborn walk along the razor’s edge of self-destruction, I always kept a safe distance, and Placebo kept coming back anyway, like an unwanted or less-wanted echo of the past.
And on that road, the album Battle For The Sun, released in 2009, was a huge disappointment, the worst album of their career. After such a general fiasco and an avalanche of damning reviews, hardly anyone dared predict that Placebo would ever pick themselves up again. Rehashing patterns we’d already heard and tons of generic crap were the send-off into the latest EP B3, but miracles still happen. Brian Molko’s world-weariness remains, along with vitriolic doses of narcotic haze and a decadent wrestling match with his own sexuality, as the red thread of a far more defined and damn fresh mini record, one that after a long time actually put a smile of satisfaction on my lips. B3 is a textbook example of how a compact Placebo record should sound: instead of forced artsiness, Placebo once again sound like a living, productive team of well-rehearsed musicians ready to burn out for a good song in every single moment of the record, and the full sound is the solvent in which all those previously piled-up doubts dissolve, my dears.
The opener B3 is a hyper-energetic Placebo banger showing that Molko has no intention of fixing anything that isn’t totally broken. A repetitive guitar riff and that damn recognizable whiny emo voice on three notes, keyboards and verses that open up into a damn gorgeous chorus – all of it nicely recalls the brightest moments of the past, while the resemblance to Filter sends me into full throttle. The sound is full and explosively epic, and Molko’s fragility becomes the main trump card for filling the vaults of the universe. Even though the bombastic intro sonically suggests a mix of a real rock band and a Nintendo console, it’s a gorgeous swerve away from the artsy-fartsy experiment of three years ago. I Know You Want To Stop is a slight album filler, and this time Placebo borrow their filler from Minxus (as if Siddharta decided to cover a song by, say, Zircus). I don’t want to be unfair, but a couple of lovely guitar moves (reminiscent of The Edge’s concept of painting sound in the U2 coloring book, but with less echo and more distortion …) rescue a completely misguided choice, and the weak link of this short-form record is just this one.
I fell in love at first listen, though, with The Extra, which rounds out the sonic palette with a powerful mix of acoustics, drums and gut-wrenching vocals. Molko asks how to love in a world where he’s a mere extra in his own movie, and this time he doesn’t ruin the emotional outpouring with kitschy layering but lets the song breathe with lighter lungs. Less is actually more here, the melancholic approach hits hard and puts the alienated satellite back into the right orbit, while Placebo carry on their sonic narrative in a more sinister and darker vein. I.K.W.Y.L. weaves its majesty gradually, and after a guitar echo of static-soaked sound, Molko’s vocal climbs slowly and with taste. The singer’s performance is the record’s strongest card, but I wouldn’t neglect Stefan Olsdal’s refined bass work either, and newcomer Steve Forrest proves a good replacement behind the drums, since Placebo come across as organically connected and tight. Molko keeps the suspense of his anger going in a more controlled way, and maturity radiates from the last gem of this truly lovely trip into the past too. Time Is Money is an outstanding 7-minute closing moment of this long-awaited proof that the noblest musical inspiration has been revived. The slow build-up and the relaxing feeling of not being bothered by the clock is simply unique. Time, wars and fears are woven into a gorgeous lyrical tapestry, and Molko sings of salvation while Jesus himself walks in front of the whole parade of war machines of destruction. With a single touch Molko turns sacred imagery thoroughly profane and worldly, and reduces the idealized pictures of a shiny world of perfection to dust and ashes. Gorgeous! On top of that, the whole package, music, lyrics and messages alike, is the kind that will leave you at least a little bit shaken up!
The surreal beauty of a conformist form flows together in Placebo into the finest moment of the whole record, one that will make the wait for album number seven a little easier and, above all, more meaningful. Even if you’d written them off, I suggest you save a little room in your heart to fall, even just slightly, for the new, reborn Placebo. I did, and I’m truly grateful that once, way back in 1996, I sat glued to the TV and listened to a freaky trio from London, wondering whether the singer was a dude or a chick, listening with skepticism, and finding beneath layers of flat superficiality that little something extra that let Placebo carve out their own musical niche and carry the steel constructs of their own thoughts and lives, at least in their music, transparently on their shoulders to this day. And through it all they haven’t gone bad, but, with a few stops along the way, have even gotten better! Nobody else can offer you a substitute for that – well, truly confident purveyors of this kind of pleasure are damn rare these days, let’s be honest! B3 is undoubtedly a record you’ll gladly come back to again and again, and that’s one more reason why!
Line-up
Brian Molko – vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards
Stefan Olsdal – bass, guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Steve Forrest – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Production
David Bottrill, Adam Noble, Placebo
Track list
- B3
- I Know You Want To Stop
- The Extra
- I Know Where You Live
- Time Is Money
