Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Battle For The Sun - Placebo)

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Battle For The Sun - Placebo
Date:	14/08/09 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The title track is a big hitter, great to see them still in action

Disadvantages: Very patchy quality, just not classic Placebo

Placebo are a defiantly odd band, and always have been, sitting somewhere between flamboyant glam and angry punk posturing. Surfing in on the tail end of Britpop, they've defied the music press by remaining a going concern for six albums and about fifteen years. Probably, if we're being completely honest, because they've never raised their heads far enough above the parapet of popular culture to burn out like Oasis does every couple of years.

Boasting more drummers than Spinal Tap, and the distinctive nasal mid-Atlantic vocals of Brian 'sex pixie' Molko, the band is, in the best tradition of UK middleweight rock groups, huge in Europe, and famous for generating publicity through spats with other bands. One of the most notorious being their run-in with Limp Biskit during a South American tour.

But anyway. Battle For the Sun. Sixth album, any good? Well, that depends on your point of view, really. It's an enjoyable enough piece of music, but does it match the heights of the glory days of the self-titled Placebo and Without You I'm Nothing? No, not really.

Molko has said this is the first Placebo album with a 'discernable thematic unity'. He often talks like this, which has raised many accusations of pretentiousness over the years, but to be fair, bands will say almost anything to avoid the phrase 'concept album', aka 'commercial kiss of death'.

Not that Battle For the Sun really comes across as a concept album, mind you. There's a healthy amount of variety on here, from the Britpopesque Kings of Medicine to the quasi-Queens of the Stone Age sound of parts of title track Battle For the Sun, and the combination of new drummer Steve Forrest and producer David Bottrill seems to have an added a bit of punch and bite to Placebo's sound that hasn't been there since the early days.

But it's all a bit... I don't quite know. Look, the thing about Placebo is that their original style was very straightforward. Although Malko's guitar work sounds pretty sophisticated on even their first album, the truth is this was largely due to the adoption of 'Placebo tuning', a variant on Drop D tuning, which meant, well, the poor little lad didn't have to move his fingers too much, basically.

Me being me, I love the idea that a band can conquer Europe and release videos of themselves walking down the sides of skyscrapers, while only being able to make one chord shape. They write the music, it seems to me only efficient to write that music in such a way that it's easy to play.

Where Battle For the Sun goes wrong, I feel, is in expanding beyond the basic instrument range of guitar, bass and drums. There's trumpets now, and saxophones, and I can't help but feel that for a glam/grunge/punk band, there's not much room for trying to incorporate a bit of ska as well. I think it's great that Placebo is developing, and that they're skilled musicians determined not to settle for ploughing their mid-90s groove for the rest of their careers, but the increased musical range sort of dilutes their sound for me, and makes it sound sometimes a bit like a school band playing a Placebo song. It's undoubtedly their most musically accomplished album, but I think they've sacrificed a bit of their identity to get there.

It's a mistake a lot of bands make mid-career, having a bigger recording budget they bring in string sections and play gigs with orchestras, before suddenly realising they've lost touch with their roots and releasing a 'stripped-down' follow-up album. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what we get as Placebo's seventh release.

Title track Battle For the Sun is a good example of this, it's a solid song with an insistent marching beat that breaks into a soaring transcendent chorus about 'dream brothers'. With an electric violin in the background. It's a worthy addition to the band's catalogue, but I can't wait to see them live when the strings will have to be substituted for some proper NOISE.
Ashtray Heart has a great title, as it was the band's original name way back in the early 90s. It's got a bit of the zing of the band's first album's opener Come Home, particularly in the chorus. It would probably have made a better opening track than the unremarkable Kitty Litter.

I think part of the problem that Placebo have in maintaining their reputation is that they've lost a large chunk of their relevance. In the mid-90s, a high-profile band with an openly bisexual singer and gay guitarist was an important development in society's rocky road to accepting non-heterosexual lifestyles. The mere fact that Molko was singing songs like Nancy Boy helped a lot of their fans come to terms with their own sexuality. That time's kind of over now, though. Everyone's at least a little bit gay now, and I worry that without the social relevance of the band, they are starting to fade in the public imagination.

Every time I listen to the album I start to think I'm being a bit harsh here. Anthemic tracks like Julien seem to cry out for the orchestral swell that gradually builds up, and the juxtaposition of violins and the grim chorus hook 'slow-motion suicide' is an effective contrast. But as soon as I find myself tempted to award the record an extra star, I'm reminded of Pure Morning, Every You, Every Me, even their covers of 20th Century Boy and Running Up That Hill.

Placebo have been around a long time, but they still sound fresh and still clearly have a lot of innovation in them. Battle For the Sun would be a stunning debut album for any band, but these chaps are just capable of quite a bit more. One final mix, cutting a few of the weaker tracks (_Kitty Litter_ especially) and stripping out the orchestras with ruthless savagery could have made this release a classic. Listen, enjoy, but make sure you check out the back catalogue.

This is quite a new album, so while I actually paid about £14 for it, you can generally get it for around a tenner for as long as it remains in the album charts.

Summary: A pleasant but unremarkable sixth album from Britpop survivors Placebo.