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With the reviews pile seemingly having turned into "Greatest Hits A-Go-Go" this month, it seems like we're having to dig up retrospectives on a ton of groups. So to Placebo then and, like a lot of the groups who've got best ofs out this month, a band who've had some skyscraping highs and dismal lows in their recording career.
Placebo have always been a supremely inconsistent band and "Once More With Feeling" kind of bears that out. Even in their early stages, they were chucking out scathing buzz-punk gems like "Teenage Angst" and "Bruise Pristine" and meandering dross like "Come Home" in equal measure. Unfortunately, they suffered from a classic case of second album syndrome (1998's "Without You I'm Nothing") and the sluggish "Pure Morning" and the dull "You Don't Care About Us" were poor at the time and still sound that way now.
2000's "Black Market Music" saw the group trying to reinvent themselves with mixed results - "Special K" was the best single they'd done for a good three years but on the flipside, "Slave To The Wage" just sounds derivative while "Taste In Men" leans a bit too heavily on Gary Numan's later output for its own good. It's only really with last year's "Sleeping With Ghosts" that Placebo finally emerged from the haze to come up with a fairly coherent album and the likes of "English Summer Rain" possibly point the way to a better future for Brian Molko and co.
An inconsistent legacy from an inconsistent band all told. Placebo may well walk the walk and talk the talk but there's a nagging feeling that, seven years into their career, we're still waiting for a knockout blow from them.
Rating: 6/10
Reviewed by Andy James
