Music > Album Reviews

Placebo – Never Let Me Go

21/03/22

Wow! This album really is just quite incredible from Brian Molko’s Placebo.
For a band that are now something of a cult indie band after first bursting onto the scene in 1996 with their self-titled debut album, this is one heck of an album to comeback with and it’s their first in nine years. They are still absolutely smashing it out of the park and on this form they are here for a mighty long time yet.

Some eight albums in now and they are they still going stronger than ever before.
The opening track Forever Chemicals sets the tone for a quite blistering record and with its edgy guitar riffs and next track Beautiful James is just so very sumptuous with its delightfully addictive keyboards, its classic Placebo.

Hugz, helps to take it all onto a quite different level, it’s just quite incredible, bloody amazing stuff in fact. Wow oh wow! It leaves your ears still ringing from that particular thrill of a ride as the opening bars of Happy Birthday In The Sky starts up. This is a quite wondrous track with pounding guitar riffs, it’s quite an epic as Molko repeatedly bellows out, ‘darling happy birthday’. Then next up is Prodigal with its anthemic tone it’s also classic Placebo in the making as you then lose yourself in its utter magic with its driving guitar. ‘I am alive’ sings Molko and on this evidence, who am I to argue?

The early tracks set the tone for a very memorable album, Sad White Reggae very much keeps it all alive, not that it’s looking for a life support machine at any time throughout its duration. Twin Demons is quite incredible too, with its pulsating rhythm and teeth grinding feedback at the end of the song.

This Is What You Wanted sees a more mellow tone, but it fits in just perfectly as do Went Missing and Fix Yourself.

With indie anthems galore on this latest recording, its 13 tracks of pure joy and they can be mighty proud of Never Let Me Go, it is a very fine piece of work indeed, there really isn’t a duff track on the album.

If they are playing anywhere near you at some point soon, you must go and check them out, for this is a band that’s packed full of energy and creativity and very clearly still getting a BIG thrill out of writing new music. It is set to become a classic indie album in the making.
This will definitely be on heavy rotation on my turntable for the rest of 2022.
It is released on the 25th of March 2022, so go and buy yourself a copy, for you will not be disappointed I promise you that.

10 / 10