This year, the British alternative rockers Placebo return to the spotlight with their fifth album ‘Meds’, the follow-up to 2003’s ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’. Being a year-long fan of Placebo myself (they rank among my three favorite bands still playing, with the other two - Muse and Radiohead - also set to release new material later this year), this review is likely to be biased, but hopefully at least thoroughly so! I feel that in order to really determine where a band is currently standing, you need to look at where they’ve come from and what they’ve been through. Which is why I will use a paragraph or two to discuss band’s progression over the years first, before I take in ‘Meds’, so bear with me.

I was alone / falling free /
trying my best not to forget /
what happened to us / what happened to me /
what happened as I let it slip

Placebo’s sound on their self-titled debut started off as a welcome alternative to britpop rock in the mid nineties, while their sophomore effort ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ in 1998 established Placebo’s unique style (both musically and in appearance), featuring hit singles such as ‘Every Me, Every You’ and ‘Pure Morning’. The third record ‘Black Market Music’ (released in 2000) saw Placebo leaning more towards pop, offering new listeners an easier access to their music, despite lead singer Brian Molko’s lyrics dealing with non-mainstream issues such as the depths of his drug abuse (’Special K’), his bisexual orientation (’Taste in Men’) and his broken childhood (’Black-Eyed’). Before recording ‘Sleeping with Ghosts’ (which would be released in 2003), the band promised to move towards more electronical sounds, but ended up merely laying-off the predecessor’s straightforward guitar-sound and being more experimental in their song arrangements. Critics were quick to claim the band’s music was stagnating at last and that tracks on ‘Sleeping with Ghosts’ could be substituted with songs on ‘Black Market Music’ to no audible effect.

We’ll rise above this /
we’ll cry about this /
as we live and learn /
A broken promise /
I was not honest /
now I watch as tables turn

In spite of all this, Placebo had meanwhile managed to establish an enormous fanbase, particularly on continental Europe (while their home the UK continued to be skeptical of Molko’s seemingly pretentious mannerisms), usually headlining the (prestigious) music festivals they were invited to, and making friends as well as collaborating with giants in the business such as David Bowie, The Cure, Pixies and R.E.M. Placebo decided to release a Singles collection in late 2004, which also featured the non-album track ‘Twenty Years’, their first real venture to atmospheric synthesized sound scapes with much less rock. So when the band returned to their recording studio for album five in November 2005, the big question was if ‘Twenty Years’ would be indicative of their sound to come, or if they would stick with their trademark tunes that had brought them so much success.

As your skin starts a scratching /
wave yesterday’s action goodbye /
forget past indiscretions and stolen possessions /
you’re high //
In the cold light of morning /
while everyone’s yawning

And now that ‘Meds’ is out, it’s time to assess just this. Upon giving the album its first listen-through, two things became immediately apparent to me: (1) this is not Placebo’s ‘Kid A’ (i.e. a breaking leap away from the accustomed) and (2) ‘Meds’ is very versatile. The former will obviously be held against them by neutrals, and indeed, when I scoured the web for other people’s opinions, I found the frequent “but this sounds just like ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’/'Black Market Music’” comments. I disagree with them. ‘Meds’ is edgier and broodier than its predecessors, and I can definitely hear the band leaving their ‘comfort zone’, which is the approach they had aimed for together with producer Dimitri Tikovoi (Trash Palace). Take the track ‘Space Monkey’ for example, which doesn’t come close to anything they’ve ever recorded before, both musically - it reminds me of Nine Inch Nails, ‘The Downward Spiral’ era - and lyrically:

Space monkey in a place to be /
a mass of contradictions in a golden frame /
raising the roof in a calamity way /
completely meretricious of a poke in the eye

I’d also describe ‘Meds’ as the darker brother of ‘Black Market Music’ in the sense that both albums share a similar versatility. You won’t find any specific formula the band have applied to all songs, no two sound alike in any way. The fact that the song progression runs so smoothly is testimony to the band’s experience and the quality of the production (Tikovoi) and mixing (Flood) work. From the first chord on the title-giving opener ‘Meds’ until the final “Goodbye” on the last track the listener is taken through a wide selection of moods and impressions, ups and downs: megalomania (’One Of A Kind’), desperation (’Blind’), masochism (’Pierrot The Clown’), wrath (’Infra-Red’), pity (’Drag’), contemplation (’Follow The Cops Back Home’), and sobering up (’In The Cold Light Of Morning’), to name a few.

Now I’m trying to wake you up /
to pull you from the liquid sky /
cause if I don’t we’ll both end up /
with just your songs to say goodbye

Among this gripping succession of emotions and pictures, not once do I feel the need to skip a track, I simply can’t find any boring filler material. It is almost equally difficult to single out highlights. ‘Song To Say Goodbye’, the current single, would be an obvious choice; the track’s title and its placement as the last song on the album belie its pace and energy, and the song’s arrangement and structure are amongst the band’s most gripping. ‘Follow The Cops Back Home’ features a wonderfully engrossing guitar line and feels just as powerfully immersive as ‘Special Needs’ does on ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’. The song is further beset with some of the album’s most interesting lyrics:

The call to arms was never true /
I’m medicated, how are you /
Let’s take a dive, swim right through /
sophisticated points of view //
Let’s follow the cops back home /
and rob their houses

‘Space Monkey’ and ‘Infra-Red’ deserve special mentions also, for being so radically different from the band’s previous efforts, but no less engaging. ‘Broken Promise’, a collaboration with R.E.M.’s lead singer Micheal Stipe and a further highlight, features haunting piano-verses and a powerful chorus (the guitar riff when Molko sings “I’ll wait my turn / to tear inside you” sounds like its doing just that), while the other track featuring a guest, ‘Meds’, is no less noteworthy with its brilliant guitar build-up and a somewhat self-mocking but cool hook by Alison Mosshart from The Kills. My unquestionable favorite though is ‘Pierrot The Clown’, a song with such an amount of brutal honesty and intensity that I haven’t heard from the band since ‘Black-Eyed’ on ‘Black Market Music’. The band seems dangerously close to pathos here, but fortunately they never give in, there’s no anguished screaming, and the beautiful background melody is perfectly underplayed. The song’s real strength, however, is its paradox narration between longing and physical harm, which reflects the theme Molko deals with, namely masochism:

Leave me dreaming on the bed /
see you right back here tomorrow for the next round /
Keep this scene inside your head /
as the bruises turn to yellow /
the swelling goes down //
And if you’re ever around /
in the city or the suburbs of this town /
be sure to come around /
I’ll be wallowing in sorrow /
wearing a frown like Pierrot the clown

Concluding this review, I’d have to say that I appreciate ‘Meds’ not only as a further step forward in Placebo’s musical career, but also as an engaging, coherent, versatile, edgy and brilliantly produced rock album. It is all that I could have hoped for as a fan, but I imagine I would have also thoroughly enjoyed it if I had not been previously familiar with the band. ‘Meds’ also comes in a special edition that features a bonus DVD with a making-of documentary, demos, lyrics, a picture gallery and live videos (including a duet of ‘If Only Tonight We Could Sleep’ with The Cure).

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