Placebo
The Piece Hall, Halifax
25th June 2024
Placebo were once kings of indie club dance floors but these days are more likely to be found at rock festivals. Die-hard indie kid Paul Clarke took a trip down memory lane to test their rock credentials.
Veterans of indie clubs in the late 1990s like Manchester’s Poptastic would forever have a soft spot for Placebo’s early work that was always a guaranteed dancefloor filler, but since then they have somehow managed to morph into a fixture on the bill at rock festivals. Being more familiar with Placebo’s first two albums, I wasn’t convinced of their rock credentials until they struck up the muscular opening chords of opener Taste In Men, and although they certainly had a much bigger sound it was still at heart indie rock.
Placebo these days are a duo of vocalist/guitarist Brain Molko and bassist Stefan Olsdal, backed by a tight set of hired hands on second guitar, drums, twin keyboards, and even a bit of violin on some numbers.Their secret sauce remained Molko’s unique high pitched vocals – imagine an indie Geddy Lee – full of a keening range that made his often painfully honest lyrics appeal to emo kids of all ages, including the young kid who gleefully bounced up and down on her dad’s shoulders as the Placebo torch was passed down the generations.
Before the band came on Molko had issued a heartfelt video plea for fans to leave their phones in their pockets as endless photographing made it hard for the band to capture the emotions in their songs, and urged the crowd to live in the ‘here and now’. Apart from a few assholes that request was respected, and how refreshing it was to watch a gig without a forest of distracting screens being held up as people take sh*t photos miles away from the stage.
Molko clad all in black sported a big seventies moustache, and Oldsal in just a waistcoat and dark pants were the focal point of the show working the stage as the keyboard picked out the motif in Beautiful James, celebrating diversity to a crowd comfortable with being different. The clap intro into Scene of the Crime seemed to get the mixed-age group audience going before Molko slowed it down with the more reflective Happy Birthday in the Sky, from their well-received latest album Never Let Me Go, which explored the grief process as he observed in his intro to the song that: ‘This place sounds better than a Roman amphitheatre’.
Whilst the vocals remain Placebo’s USP there was much to admire in Olsdal’s melodic bass playing that introduced Bionic from their debut album. The duo were back in rock mode as the second guitarist did much of the heavy lifting on Surrounded by Spies, as Molko reflected on his own experience of being spied on and our increasing surveillance culture. Interestingly the biggest responses in this show was for their early stuff, and it was a delight to see indie floor filler Every You Every Me back in the set, which not surprisingly won a massive cheer, and got the woman next to me onto her feet.
Placebo were not afraid to mix it up as a white piano was wheeled out for Olsdal to pick out the melody on Too Many Friends, from their Loud Like Love album, which sadly are all too often just people we interact with online rather than IRL.A pulsating For What It’s Worth picked the tempo up as one teenage emo kid danced with her mum, also dressed in black from head to toe.
The Bitter End was anything as two overexcited Goths charged towards the front, before their gender-fluid top-five hit Nancy Boy with added violin proved the perfect way to end the set. They came back on with Infra-Red all about the dangers of over indulgence which this band certainly knew a lot about before they closed with their clever stripped-down cover of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, which suited Molko’s vocals perfectly, and was a definite crowd pleaser. Placebo may not be full-fat indie these days, and for me, not quite a rock band, but they made a big sound that reverberated around the four walls of this venue.
Placebo knew what worked for them, so crowd-pleasers from back in the day, and some interesting newer material, went down just fine with an intelligent fanbase who had always stood alongside an underrated band determined to walk their path.
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Placebo can be followed on Facebook | Twitter |and their website
Words by Paul Clarke, you can see his author profile here.
All photos by Frank Ralph, you can find Frank at his website here:
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