Placebo - 'Twenty Years' (Virgin)
4/5
By: Lauren Gallagher
As the years prove, Placebo named themselves well. Originating from the Latin for 'I shall please,' 'placebo' can refer to the vespers sung for the dead in the Roman Catholic Church. For a decade, Placebo have been known as masters of the macabre, chiselling their own niche in alternative rock history. While many of their influences (glam, grunge...) have come and gone, Placebo have maintained a consistently unique presence since their 1994 debut, earning them a massive, sometimes androgynous, eye-lined following.
'Twenty Years' reincarnates Placebo's trademark gloom into a tune of fluid melancholia. Spectres float to the lucid guitar, before the drums steadily chase them, making spirits dance to Brian Molko's nasal, longing vocals. Not a tune of depressed distortion, 'Twenty Years' is a lambent meditation, alternating moments of light with dark, reality with fiction, this world with the other world. Beauty is often found in the depths of such stark contrast. Let the flickering light of 'Twenty Years' be an example of that.
Artists in this article: Placebo
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