| While Placebo's previous couple of albums demonstrated a tendency to pander to a devout fanbase eager to suckle up frontman Brian Molko's shrill delivery of prurient autobiographical narrative and sexual innuendo, their fifth album, Meds, finds them ready to engage again with the rock mainstream. Tracks like "Infra Red" and "Post Blue" craft a fresh dynamic between quiet-loud Pixies dynamics and febrile Sonic Youth crunch, and there's a couple of notable guest appearances: first in the shape of VV, smouldering frontwoman of The Kills, who brings her femme fatale drawl to the chorus of "Meds", but also REM's Michael Stipe, who shadows Molko through the dynamite plumes of "Broken Promise". "Drag", meanwhile, might even become a career highlight, a breezy hymn to self-loathing with characteristically perverse lyrics ("You're the first one to swim `cross the Seine/I lag behind"), while "Pierrot The Clown" strikes a neatly poignant note, all painted-frown melodrama and tapped glockenspiel. All in all, it's probably Placebo's most accessible album since Without You I'm Nothing. --Louis Pattison |
