Placebo
Without You I'm Nothing

THE REVIEW

"A friend in need's a friend indeed / A friend with weed is better / A friend with breast and all the rest / A friend who's dressed in leather"

This is how the work of the band led by the ambiguous Brian Molko begins, a guitarist and vocalist of a very eccentric group whose appearance and look somewhat recall the glam style of early David Bowie or the dark style of Robert Smith (The Cure).
These are the words of "Pure Morning," 4 minutes of calm and composed rock before the punk explosion of "Brick Shithouse," a classic track played "à la Placebo," just like "You Don't Care About Us," which brings to mind the more recent "This Picture" with a dominant bass line.
The presence of brit-rock in "Without You I'm Nothing," the title track, goes like this: "I'm unclean a libertine / And every time you vent your spleen / I seem to lose the power of speech / You're slipping slowly from my reach / You grow me like an evergreen / You've never seen the lonely me at all"
"The Crawl" sounds very much like intimate Interpol, in the style of "The New," to be clear, with Brian's voice and the bass dominating.
"Every You Every Me," well-known for being featured on the soundtrack of "Cruel Intentions," is a particularly fast track with slight rock 'n' roll nuances.
The nearly 6 minutes of "My Sweet Prince" are very slow, extremely soft pop with a particularly delicate vocal part.
"Burger Queen," which closes the album, sounds a lot like JJ72 (although it should be the opposite since this song was written before the release of JJ72, whatever...) and lasts a good 23 minutes since after the 6 minutes of song there are about 10 minutes of silence before a hidden-track that contains death threats Brian received by phone mixed into a relatively fast-paced rock base. A rather original idea...

One of the band's best works, recorded in 1998. Perhaps only surpassed by the latest "Sleeping With Ghosts," which has a drier, more decisive, and mature sound.
Despite being only the second album, it already demonstrates all the confidence and self-assurance of a band that would dare to smash a guitar and show the middle finger to an audience like that of the Sanremo Festival... and to do something like that, you're either absolutely sure of yourself or you've taken something strong (in the case of Placebo, I think both hypotheses hold true...)