Placebo
Meds

THE REVIEW

The Placebo quickly made a name for themselves. The second album was indeed a success, and from then on, their path to success, not worldwide but a good market share, wasn't very arduous. It's true that their music has always been aided by Molko's voice, which turned songs with sometimes too complex or too simplistic sounds into something new.

The Placebo have always tried to experiment with new sounds since their second album. In this one, they aimed for a more melancholic type of music, while the first was more rock. The third album appeared very acoustic to me in certain tracks and similar to "Without You I'm Nothing" in others. "Sleeping with Ghosts" experimented with electronics, suggesting a change of direction in Placebo's music. Two years later, Placebo released "Meds". The title, "Medicine" or "Psychotropics", refers back to themes from their first three works, which talked about the singer's insecurity and past issues. A return to the beginnings, so to speak. However, the album presents itself as a kind of summary of the previous discs. The album starts with the title track "Meds", a song that, for me, conveys how the album presents itself. It mixes the acoustic guitar typical of "Every Me and Every You" and continues with a rock style very akin to their beginnings, simple and very strong. The duet with Alison Mosshart is very well done because the two voices blend well (as it happened with David Bowie in "Without You I'm Nothing"). The track presents a new sound for the Placebo, but it’s nothing more than the union of some typical sounds from the past.

The other tracks on the album are all modern and revised propositions of their typical sounds. "Infra-Red" harks back a lot to the songs of "Sleeping with Ghosts", "Second Sight" especially, but adds an extra touch of rock. "Blind" seems like a song from the first album if it weren't for Brian's more refined voice and some very well-executed guitar solos. "Space Monkey" is a very original song for the Placebo. It has a very particular sound that is hard to define, a mixture of electronic rock from "Sleeping with Ghosts" and the melancholy of "Without You I'm Nothing"; the melody nevertheless echoes little of previous works and remains one of the most innovative songs on the album. "Follow the Cops Back Home" is a typical ballad from "Black Market Music", the typical acoustic sounds disappear and are replaced with early rock. Then born is the typical Placebo ballad, only with more sophisticated sounds. "Post Blue" is the ugliest song in my opinion and seems like a track rejected from "Sleeping with Ghosts". Finding the same things, in my opinion not very good, in such a varied album, is not ideal.

"Because I Want You", the first single from the album in England, hits us with solid, robust, and magnificently constructed rock, something that was not possible in the early days, given the immaturity and inexperience back then. "Blind" is a mishmash of all their sounds. It mixes electronic rock, classic rock, and melancholic rock. Boring. "Pierrot the Clown" is a wonderful, damn well-executed song. It manages, unlike some songs, to be a track that in the future could be remembered as the song that matured Placebo, as Molko's voice, for the first time, sings almost without accompaniment and manages to express all its emotionality. "Broken Promise" is excellent only for the two voices that don't miss a beat; otherwise, it remains the usual fast and painless Placebo song. My favorite song, "One of a Kind", may sound like a song from "Sleeping with Ghosts" but it's much more mature. It's perfectly constructed, with instruments overlapping one another impeccably until the bass piece, which is barely audible, delivering, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful bass pieces ever heard ("Seven Nation Army" does have a nice bass piece, but it's the keystone of a song, and it’s not as ingenious as this, inserted in the middle of a track). The next song is one of the saddest I know. In "In the Cold Light of Morning", Brian's voice has a very low tone, it sneaks between the bones like a cold wind, and listening to it, you can’t help but feel chills of fear, as if the world around you were dying. The melody follows this phantom voice in very melancholic and "fragile" phrasings.

"Song To Say Goodbye" is the pop song of the album, not surprisingly the first single worldwide instead of "Because I Want You". It ends up being too rock-pop, different from Placebo's classics. Additionally, there are too many changes in the melody, which make it, in my opinion, unpleasant and incomplete. In this song, Placebo disappointed me. "Meds" is an album composed of tracks that hark back to previous ones and others that prove to be innovative and new for the Placebo. This group shows they can renew themselves, change, improve, and also create a certain feeling between the various songs.

Listening to the album several times made me realize that there is a common thread that connects all the tracks and makes "Meds" one of the best works by Placebo.