PLACEBO

Never Let Me Go (So)

Released nine years after its predecessor, album number eight has been a long time coming for Placebo. Not that you’d know they’d been away, at least initially. On Forever Chemicals, which zooms out of the speakers like a mid-90s Pumpkins pastiche, Brian Molko manages to shoehorn staple references to drugs, fucking and regret into the first few lines before delivering a Teenage Angst-esque chorus: “It’s so good when nothing matters / It’s so good when no one cares / It’s so good when I feel nothing / It’s so good when I’m not there”.

Beautiful James follows immediately after, a carbon copy of every Placebo song ever. And that’s as good as it gets, unless you’re a fan of mid-paced stadium chug (Try Better Next Time), insipid orchestral dross (The Prodigal), tragic robo-rock (Sad White Reggae), lyrical clunkers (“To look you in the eye is like a spray full of mace…”) and album closers seemingly built around a keyboard’s bossa nova demo tune.

words BEN WOOLHEAD