Placebo
Black Market Music

THE REVIEW

Structurally speaking, Black Market Music greatly resembles the previous Without You I'm Nothing: Taste In Men is the new Pure Morning, the "less representative" song of the album's sound; Slave To The Wage (track no.8) and Special K (no.3) play the part of Every You Every Me (track no.8!!) and You Don't Care About Us (no.3!!).

The lyrics. A pinch of disappointment here is understandable: even though it's entirely understandable that Brian no longer wants to "put his personal diary on a CD", the feeling one gets listening to verses like "I'm unclean a libertine / And every time you vent your spleen (...) You'll never see the lonely me at all" is not exactly the same as listening to things like "Hello mom / Hi mom (...) Who is uncle Tom / You are".

But it would be unfair to judge this album solely by comparison to the previous one: Black Market Music is, as a whole, a varied record, well-crafted and "full" in its sounds; capable of eliciting multiple emotions, both in the more "sonic" and energetic tracks (Special K, Days Before You Came) and in the slower, darker ones (Peeping Tom, Narcoleptic).

If Molko states that the idea of dependency underlies this album, be it from people, emotions, substances, and/or situations, fans can add that Black Market Music hasn't helped them recover from their "Placebo-dependency".