Jung and Freudened
Placebo : Battle for the Sun
Released: Out Now!!!
Label: PIAS / Vagrant
During the first half of the 20th century, you know, that fusty old yawn of a century we left waaaaaaaay behind all those years ago (9), there came a revolution in the way the people of the world looked at themselves. It was called psychoanalysis, and the father of this might be someone you’ve heard of; one Sigmund Freud, bearded nutcase or insightful genius, or both, depending on your viewpoint. One of his contemporaries was a man named Carl Jung, who posited that a person’s unconscious personality was made up of either the anima and the animus, the former being the feminine inner personality of a male, and the latter the opposite. He said that this inner personality was part unconscious and part conscious, and would manifest itself in many different ways, including through dreams, interactions with the opposite sex and, interestingly enough, as artistic impulses.
Following on from this, the idea of androgyny is as old as we are, and it found a rich seam in the history of music, and specifically aspects of rock n roll. From the early practitioners of glam rock, with Marc Bolan and Bowie stomping around in all their finery, on to people like Adam Ant and pretty much everyone in the 1980s (you know who you are) took the idea of the masculine form and infused it with subtle, and not so subtle, feminine wiles. You only have to look at today, as lads with shaggy long hair wriggle into skinny jeans, pull on heeled boots and apply the eyeliner (guyliner is what us cool cats call it) to see how this continues; I am just thankful that my granddad doesn’t know I possess all the above things bar eyeliner (though I may have indulged) as, despite the fact I have a girlfriend, he would probably force me down a mine in the middle of the night with two rabid dogs and a broken teaspoon to “make me a real man”.
Now, if you were to stick with this tortuous opening theme (which is going somewhere, I promise) and if I were to ask you to shake a stick at one of the most androgynous, polarising and interesting bands of our time you would probably glance closely over Suede and settle on Placebo. Placebo formed in London in 1994 and almost immediately became renowned for their sexually provocative image and songwriting, with lead man Brian Molko being avowedly bisexual and bassist Stefan Olsdal being homosexual; in fact, being a straight drummer in this band must have appeared to be as fitting as a nun running a sex shop. This interesting setup particularly stood out in the laddish era of lager-swilling, fighting, swearing and smoking Britpop, but they also drew attention because of their brilliant music, which seemed suffused with despair, menace, love and redemption all at once. Singles like Nancy Boy, Pure Morning and Every You, Every Me were great sellers and their albums were popular, but they always maintained a just-below-the-radar cult status that seemed befitting of them.
One thing Placebo did do across their career, and it is to their credit, is that they liked to mix up what they were doing. Although there are familiar tropes and bloodlines running through their music, they have at all times tried to keep things fresh, and not rest on their laurels and do the same old thing, like some bands I won’t mention (the one in particular I’m thinking of rhymes with the phrase “Geyser Beefs” – riddle me that readers).
And so it is, we come to Placebo’s 6th studio offering, which has a name that seems to have come out of some late night whiskey-soaked brainstorming session involving HG Wells, George Lucas and Philip K Dick. Battle for the Sun is a fascinating and confusing album to review, mainly because I’m a feckless incompetent but also because it is a very nuanced album that seems to change in a chameleonesque fashion every time I come to listen to it. For instance, on first listen I thought the first four songs were filler, whilst the following four tracks were brilliant, with a misfiring finish mixing the mediocre and the quintessentially Placebo sound. In the spirit of a fair crack of the whip, on the second spin I found myself warming to the beginning more, whilst I thought the middle seemed a little weak. After numerous other listenings I’m sure that the disc I have is haunted by some sort of Voodoo goblin who delights in torturing me by whimsically switching the songs around, as I rock on my bed, staring in the midnight candlelight at the demonic CD.
However, upon climbing down from this hyperbole, and after settling myself with a cup of Horlicks fortified with a gigantic slug of brandy, I finally reached the summit of Mount Opinion. Battle for the Sun doesn’t make any gigantic strides in any direction, but is completely solid in all respects, with a handful of seriously standout tracks like Devil in the Details, Bright Lights, Speak in Tongues, Happy You’re Gone and The Never-Ending Why. This is not to denigrate the rest of the album, but it does seem to fade into the background a little, while some songs leap out at you, as does Molko’s brilliant, seditious whine of a voice. There is menace, there is levity, there is the lyrical intensity and the broodingly charged chords that you expect from Placebo, but it is by no means a world-beater, despite the flourishes of synthesiser and strings here and there. Having said that, this is the type of album that I’m sure will divide opinion like not many others, evidenced by the fact that I had to struggle to even agree with myself, and I’m always right…
Anyhow, I must dash, as I am going out later and I’ve got to do my bikini line and reattach the heel to my boots; as a last cause for celebration, it would seem I managed to finish this sexually and psychologically charged article without one Freudian Slit…oh dear…
Words: Paul Madill
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