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Since Little Richard at the latest, we have known that the kajal pencil is a means of liberation from heteronormative attributions. How helpful Brian Molko and his band Placebo were in extending this kohl line into stadium rock becomes clear again on their comeback almost ten years after their last album. Placebo were both rock band and anti-rockist in the ’90s – and they did so in a climate where broadleggers like Oasis set the tone in the UK. David Bowie loved her. And they loved him (and Kate Bush and Robert Smith). They sounded like his children.
This powerful sound is about depression, drugs and digital dictatorship
Today, Placebo have shrunk back to the duo they started in 1994. Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal plus studio musicians, and Molko wears his hair long and slightly curled to his mustache. A very modern retro look. His snooty, clanking voice still characterizes the songs; “Never Let Me Go” doesn’t sound like ten years have passed. It sounds more exciting than their last, now nine-year-old album “Loud Like Love”, it sounds like the placebo of better days, like a make-up jar from early Roxy Music, The Cure and a queer version of Muse.
The opener, “Forever Chemicals”, is appropriately bulky with electronic jammers and synthetic rumbles. The openly acted out bombast rock of “Hugz” puts you off for a moment, but at the latest with the melancholy mid-tempo of “Happy Birthday In The Sky” and its invading guitars, the placebo sound levels off where it is most secure. This powerful sound is about depression, drugs and digital dictatorship. It’s about a latently suicidal world, but also about a “Beautiful James” who is supposed to take the lyrical I by the hand – a restrained, suggestive declaration of love, a moving song. Placebo are totally unembarrassing ’90s survivors, made for today’s diversity campaigns
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