Placebo – Never Let Me Go

The Cognac Blues Passions festival welcomes Placebo on July 5. Back on Never Let Me Gotheir latest album to date.

Brian Molko says it: he really doesn’t want to tell people how to feel about the songs. So there’s no point dwelling on each of those that make up Placebo’s eighth album. A quarter of a century of existence and no less reflection. Never Let Me Go is also the result of one of them, rather dizzying: how to come out of years of touring in the biggest venues in the world? Titles designed for radio which, repeated over and over again, lose their substance? After the release of their best-of A Place For Us To Dream, the group needed to settle down, everything becoming more “mercantile than artistic”. Stefan Olsdal goes even further: “I had lost all the initial enthusiasm, I no longer had any energy and the idea of having to go back on stage put a lump in my stomach”.

So how do we get back to basics? This is the very essence of this new album – Placebo, real. With the difference that artistically too, they have evolved. By giving ourselves the challenge of putting a synth sound on each song. “From a melodic point of view, the guitars are often there to support the main melody, which is that of the synth”, says Brian Molko. In the lyrics, he also allows himself to speak about the suffering of the world. Psychologically, he says, these last years have affected him brutally, “as is the case for all well-meaning souls in this world”. But today, Placebo has been in existence for twenty-five years, millions of albums sold… it can well allow itself to be the spokesperson for the most sensitive.

Find this column and many others in the weekly WECB n°77, available here.