The Duke Listens To "Once More With Feeling - Singles 1996-2004" By Placebo - Page 3

First single from Black Market Music, the pulsating Taste In Men is fairly outstanding, built around a pleasingly retro-glam bassline and clanging, tin-pot drums. Slave To The Wage, meanwhile, not only has a title that sounds like something late-period Manic Street Preachers would have concocted, but musically too, the influence of the sloganeering Welshmen can be detected. Molko loses points for some daft lyrics, though, along the lines of; "Sick and tired of Maggie's farm / she's a witch with broken arms."

The Bitter End, taken from the most recent record, Sleeping With Ghosts, is pretty much a carbon copy of Nancy Boy, without the smirking schoolboy gender-bending filth. Much better is This Picture, which at least adds something (distorted talky bits) to the template which, by this point, was getting pretty stagnant. It's also got a gorgeous melody too, with all the yacking about "Fear of growing old" and such.

The two obligatory new tracks are excellent, it's gotta be said. I Do is incredibly infectious, loads of fuzz and ambient blips and such. "I wanna be a girl like you", claims Molko, "the way you swing your hips in jeans". The closing Twenty Years is a much more downbeat affair, or, as Molko puts it; "pure epic melancholy, a meditation on the passing of time and mortality. But it's not miserable."

Placebo are currently working on their fifth record, it turns out. What The Duke would suggest, since he himself has sold at least millions of records and is therefore qualified for to comment, is that the blueprint needs a bit of a touch-up. That air of repetition which occasionally threatens to undermine a lot of the rather fine stuff on the second half of Once More With Feeling needs to be addressed, is what.

Plenty of time for to worry about that, though. For now, as a career overview what does exactly as the title might suggest, there ain't a whole hell of a lot wrong with this right here.

Thanks folks.

The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando

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