Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Placebo
Label: Virgin Records
Release: 2011
Length: 28:39
Rating: 2.5/5
The story of Placebo, the alternative threesome of Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal and then-current, now long-gone drummer Steven Hewitt, is a story of unlucky coincidences and eternal controversy. In the shadow of a still bloody relevant Nirvana in 1994 and constant comparisons with the big names of the alternative scene, the London trio, whose genes mix glam-flavored Nirvana with Sonic Youth, Bowie, the Sex Pistols, The Cure and the electro-pop avant-garde of Depeche Mode, made it into the annals less for their music than for recreational excesses and drugs. Most of that negative publicity landed on the effeminate frontman Brian Molko, while the rest of them more or less dodged the black cloud of that past by regularly putting out average albums that still had some meat on them, plus the odd MTV hit. So it was pretty curious to see them reach for a short live album as early as 2006: Live At La Cigale captures the form of a seriously feuding trio during a show at Paris’s La Cigale on March 6, 2006, and this year the record got a reissue for a new generation of alt-kids.
To sum up the facts: in a set of less than half an hour, this release crams in anything but the band’s main trumps, and even the launch was meager, since the record came out almost simultaneously with their album Battle Of The Sun, right when the boys were in the middle of a stormy switch from EMI to Virgin Records. What sticks out even more is that Live At La Cigale is basically just a rerun of most of the material from Meds, and the opening track Meds radiates every standard of Placebo-style production and songwriting. Simple guitars, monotone bass and drumming, and warped verses and choruses about the eternal themes of rock – sex, drugs and music – this time mostly boil down to Molko simply forgetting to take his dose of meds, while the pathetic voice and world-weariness are the main part of the Placebo charm anyway, right? Molko is a painter of interpersonal chasms and personal breakdowns anyway, and he owns up to his title as a truly passive-aggressive sociopath with the song Infra-Red. “One more thing before we start the final face-off, / I will be the one to watch you fall, / So I came down to crash and burn your bagger’s banquet. / Someone call the ambulance./There’s gonna be an accident,” are the lyrics Placebo wrap in a very Depeche Mode-ish atmosphere of perfect junkie haze. Melancholy, self-loathing, warped states of consciousness, ominous shades of black and suicidal vibes grow into a perfectly logical continuation – the song Drag. The chemistry between Molko, the obedient bassist Olsdal and the rather benign but rhythmically tight drummer Hewitt is anything but optimistic, yet on the recordings, dark themes notwithstanding, the band sounds steady and solid. So where did it all go wrong, and where’s the way out of this one-way street to doom?
Those are the questions piling up, and with Follow The Cops Back Home Molko decides to move from contemplation to action – he drops us into a movie in which he robs a cop’s house. Placebo are emotionalists, victims of failed relationships, sadness and wandering down mental side roads, and it would be pretty interesting to check how much of what they sing is true, since Molko is quite explicit that all the songs and lyrics come from his personal experiences. If we’re talking about mental exhaustion, that’s understandable, but this time he’s talking pretty plainly about a criminal offense, hopelessness and all sorts of rather unconstructive stuff. Where drugs aren’t to blame for a pretty wretched farce on the subject of life, heart and soul slash each other with the knives of unheard and, thank god, unhappy love, and that very love-fueled blend of chemicals, physicality and a megaphone-boosted alternative soprano keeps Molko, resigned to his fate, rolling on consistently. Whether there’s guitar, bass and drums or a salvo of violins. Song To Say Goodbye, with its rather predestinating undertone from the string section, wraps up the trip through Meds, and then we set off on a journey into the slightly more distant past. You can’t escape the tragedy that easily, my dears.
The Bitter End takes you to the record Sleeping With Ghosts and the by now fairly bygone year 2003. Molko takes Orwell’s novel 1984 as his jumping-off point. The slightly Cure-ish The Bitter End lifts morale and mood by confronting us with the bare fact that the end is damn near. Special K, a song about the drug ketamine and a not-so-special, not-so-shattering gem from Black Market Music, ticks every standard box of mediocrity. The singalong chorus “I’m on sinking sand / Gravity / No escaping gravity / Gravity / No escaping… not for free / I fall down… hit the ground / Make a heavy sound / Every time you seem to come around” , with its rather pop-leaning texture, gravitates toward the final collapse of the system and closes out a waterproof-packed but hardly revolutionary set of Placebo standards.
Wolf fed, goat unharmed? Playing it safe isn’t always a recipe for success. What’s more: this time it happens way too often that half an hour of listening turns into a boring, draining slog. Molko and company are sadists, and the listeners too devoted to a narrative of miserable moments are a huge army of tragicomic masochists. This time Placebo serve up a very average little pill that does nothing earth-shattering. Nomen Est Omen, right? The record is definitely a product meant for truly fanatical fans, and the lukewarm salvos of world-weariness probably won’t win over anyone who’s still on the fence …
Lineup
Brian Molko – vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards
Stefan Olsdal – bass, guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Steve Hewitt – drums
Alex Lee – guitar, keyboards
Production
Placebo
Track list
1. Meds
2. Infra-Red
3. Drag
4. Follow the Cops Back Home
5. Post Blue
6. Song to Say Goodbye
7. The Bitter End
8. Special K
