Battle For The Sun (Limited Edition) - Placebo

...– for the most part – a pile of pretentious, over hyped drivel with a DVD of the same shameful calibre.

Overall? Battle Lost!

QUICK STATS:
Year: 2009
Tracks: 13
Length: 52.15 mins
Buy at: Play.com - £9.95 (free delivery)  ... more

I shall never forget the first time I heard a Placebo song; it was a dull Monday morning and I was flicking through the music channels on Sky, hoping for a little bit of a pick-me-up before I trudged out of the door and up to the bus stop. I was immediately drawn to the blistering sounds of ‘The Bitter End’, the group’s first single from their fourth studio album, ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’ and since then, I’ve been infatuated with the three piece band.

But I do have to stress that Placebo have always been one of those bands you either love or hate, and truly the ‘marmite’ of the alternative genre of music. They rub you up the wrong way from the get go with no apologies; the lead singer, who looks remarkably like a woman, sometimes dons a dress during live performances and spends some of his stage time shamelessly snogging the face off the Swedish bassist who, incidentally, is a foot taller than the said front man. Up until recently, in the background and on the drum kit was a very different kind of fellow, and very much the ‘straight man’ within the European three piece. However, on October 1st 2008, Placebo decided to drop a bombshell: drummer Steve Hewitt, who’d been with the group since their second album ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ had quit the band! Apart from it ruining my birthday, many of us diehard Placebo-heads were anxious to find out two things: firstly, what would the band be like minus Mr. Hewitt and secondly – and perhaps more importantly - who would be his replacement?

Many of you may stop and sneer at the notion that a change of drummer would dramatically alter a bands appeal but one of the attractions of Placebo is how the three band member’s individual styles fuse together to make a very odd mix of sounds. Front man Brian Molko is a bizarre mix of punk and glam and even though the two genres sound totally unrelated, somehow Molko has made it work since 1996, resulting in some pretty rebellious but also heartfelt yet cryptic lyrics. Bassist Stefan Olsdal spent his youth listening the likes of pop power houses Abba and the Eurhythmics, so when you just consider Molko and Olsdal’s tastes, there is already quite a crazy blend there without mentioning Hewitt’s love of hip hop and hard rock, which greatly influenced his drumming style and thus reinforced Molko’s tortured vocals perfectly.

But after Hewitt’s departure, Placebo fans worldwide were informed that another drummer, also called Steve, had entered the mix and that the newly formed trio were working on their next album, ‘Battle For The Sun’. This would be Placebo’s sixth studio album but the first record with newbie Steve who had previously performed in a little known American group Evaline. Incidentally, new Steve looked remarkably like the bloke off the ‘Lucky Charms’ cereal box but does – I am pleased to report – drum better than him. With their first right handed drummer in toe, would Molko and Olstal set off to become the new Lennon/McCartney that they’d secretly always desired? (don't worry it'll all make sense later on!) Or would ‘Battle For The Sun’ be a case of ‘Battle Lost’?

‘I NEED A CHANGE OF SKIN’ (Lyric from ‘Kitty Litter’)
‘Kitty Litter’ opens the album and straight away there is a bit of a difference; I’d already read an article where Molko exclaimed that ‘Battle For The Sun’ would be an album about ‘choosing life’ and that’s a theme noted here. ‘Kitty Litter’ does dabble in darkness from the onset but fuses into a lighter tone in which you can tell that the idea of change and shedding yourself of a past image is on the horizon, particularly as the instruments get slightly heavier upon this reckoning to denote such an adjustment. However, I think this would have been a song better suited to a female vocalist; the lyrics verge on voyeurism and the admiration of another’s body but it makes everything seem a bit cheap, particularly in terms of Brian’s vocals. Now, Brian’s voice is an acquired taste anyway as it has a nasal, Americana tenor to it which can verge on annoying and on ‘Kitty Litter’, it seems to be grating within the first minute of lyrics. Molko’s attempts as a falsetto note (at least I think that’s what he was aiming for...) fail miserably and instead, it sounds as if he’s the one in pain! Never mind the poor listener...

‘Kitty Litter’ isn’t all bad but it’s what I’d describe as ‘Emotastic’, a tag that the band has always fought tooth and nail against. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of cheap, 21st Century teen labels, an ‘Emo’ is basically a faker form of a Goth but in terms of musical style, Emo – short for ‘emotional’ – is where the music and lyrics combine to create a confessional, almost autobiographical reflection of a singers life. The tune for ‘Kitty Litter’ does boast just that; it’s very loud and is a hard hitter in that respect but it does sound remarkably like an album filler from ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’ called ‘Plasticine’. Also, I really cannot stand how ‘Kitty Litter’ finishes with a spot of hand clapping: this is a ROCK album, thus all hands should be on guitars and drums to make them roar, spit or screech rather than partake in a spot of ‘Simon Says’!

Overall, ‘Kitty Litter’ is perhaps not the best way to start the album but it does have the potential to be an excellent, audience interactive live track. Alas things can only get better for the album...right?!

Well, actually, yes. From hand clapping to shouting at a microphone in a foreign language, ‘Ashtray Heart’ at least begins in a semi-interesting way that has a stadium like feel to it. On the DVD documentary which I got as part of this limited edition set, Molko also emphasised how ‘Battle For The Sun’ was very much a representation of the sounds Placebo incorporate into their live act. ‘Ashtray Heart’, unlike ‘Kitty Litter’ is a song that grows on you with each listen and is structurally a sound song; Molko once again proves that he is capable of crafting a song that has a solid beginning, middle and end with the most striking part of the song, other than the yelling in Italian, being the middle eight. At this part of the song, the instruments are really stripped down to emphasise the deliberation between happiness and the past being a constant, threatening reminder of the bad in the world. On the topic of ‘choosing life’ however, I’m uncertain as to why verse three tells the tale of tearing muscles to use as a cigarette stub – that doesn’t seem like choosing life to me!

‘Ashtray Heart’ as a song title did make me smile as it was Placebo’s original name and I think – don’t quote me on this – it was taken from a lyric in a Captain Beefheart song. ‘Ashtray Heart’ would have been a much better song if Molko had tried to sing it in a more sincere, confused way instead of singing in a very harsh tone that seemed to lack the emotion of the lyrics. Having said that, I was astounded as to how the chorus creates a convincing, pop hook that the band have attempted before on songs like ‘Taste In Men’ and ‘Because I Want You’ but here, it seems much more lively and brings a euphoria to the song that I doubted any song on the album could possess.

‘YOU ARE A CHEAP AND NASTY FAKE AND I AM THE BONES YOU COULD NOT BREAK’ (Lyrics from ‘Battle For The Sun’)
Deciding that it was time to rip-off a well known British rock band, Placebo head into dodgy territory with the album’s title track, ‘Battle For The Sun’. Having first heard this song on Zane Lowe’s radio show, my instant thought was ‘it’s catchy but so it Chlamydia!’(ask ChemicalRomance if you don’t believe me) and it’s one of those songs that I’ve begrudgingly grown to quite enjoy; ‘Battle For The Sun’ has a good beat, is easy to sing along to and has very well arranged, shrieking guitars. However, it does drag on for far too long; the lyrics are far too repetitive and whereas the actual melody is downright dirty and fairly well executed, the lyrics have little contingency and seem to compare a Brother to a lover! Like ‘Kitty Litter’ this track seems to be about moving onwards and upwards yet the tune is very reminiscent to Muse which is surprising; Molko has had a bit of a tiff with Muse front man Matt Bellamy in the past over which band is better so, as a fan of both groups, I’d never have expected Placebo to try and out-Muse Muse. Muse have won the award for Best Live Act at the Brits and other ceremonies countless times before so for Placebo to try and make a bigger, more epically instrumented song was a big mistake, leading ‘Battle For The Sun’ to be a sadly unimpressive track which lacks the authenticity and awe that Muse’s melodies have.

Although managing to make it to number two on the UK Indie Charts but a dismal 97 on the main UK Singles charts, the first official release from this album was ‘For What It’s Worth’, a track which lacks any redeeming features at all. Other than having pathetic, clichéd lyrics, the whole song it just lifeless: Molko is trying to sing about different situations, such as people being homeless and people having terrible diseases, scenarios which nobody seems to care about but here’s the catch: it doesn’t seem like Brian himself even cares! His vocals sort of mumble along a boring guitar driven tune which would have been respectable on their debut album but now-a-days I would have expected something with a spark, especially when discussing difficult subjects. The thing is, I didn’t care about the terrible matters Molko was examining either; I didn’t care that his family had been broken up (whether that was a reference to Hewitt’s leaving of the band) or that he had a slow disease and, sadly, the lack of passion or conviction in his vocals was a trend more than often not found on many of the songs here. In a vague attempt to break up the monotony of the fourth track, Placebo decided to add Disco Diva backing vocals and a music insert from what seems like Tetris to try and disguise such appalling boringness. Alas, many will see right through it and ‘For What It’s Worth’, this is a very poor and lacklustre attempt at trying to contemplate the bigger picture by a band who have done it so well in the past on songs like ‘Soulmates’.

Whilst we are on the subject of the song ‘Soulmates’, it seems as if the fifth track was modelled around the morals in that song. ‘Devil In The Details’ seems to be about over analysing everything we, as human beings, do wrong in our lifetimes and this is where I really do question Molko’s vocal abilities, or lack of as it seems to be the case on this album so far; he seems to be losing sight of what he’s written and how he can communicate those thoughts into a convincing and thought provoking argument. ‘Devil In The Details’ tries to mask such mistakes by adding several layers of backing vocals upon the second chorus which sadly doesn’t camouflage or enhance the rather predictable synthesiser. My concern is that if ‘Battle For The Sun’ was the first album a person bought by Placebo, they’d be tempted to flog it on Amazon at this point: ‘Devil In The Details’ seems to be too self-pitying and as far away in presentation as ‘choosing life’ as any of the songs have been so far on the album.

‘I HAD SO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT MY CRAZY LIVIN’ (Lyric from ‘Bright Lights’)
Although the synthesisers on this next song seem to make the album lighter and less loathing, ‘Bright Lights’ reverts back to the corniness that made ‘For What It’s Worth’ such an excruciating track and the drum filler as the beginning sounds surprisingly like Blink 182’s ‘I Miss You’. Whilst trying to convince the listening public that ‘a heart that hurts is a heart that works’, Molko obviously doesn’t take into account those that have suffered serious medical conditions related to that particular organ in the body. However, ‘Bright Lights’ is one of the only tracks on ‘Battle For The Sun’ where I can’t necessarily criticise Brian’s vocal effort for being insincere as he lowers the pitch and lets the less depressive tune do the work for him, in which the synthesiser sort of bounces along with the softer guitars and less alarming drum beat. ‘Bright Lights’ could just be described in terms of its title: it’s a song that focuses on the lighter side of life, moving on from any negative past decisions into something more personally satisfying and I think this is reflected very well in terms of the melody, especially the burst of energy by the guitars at the finale.

Molko’s favourite song from ‘Battle For The Sun’ is the rather strange ‘Speak In Tongues’ which starts out by ripping off their own B-Side from yonks ago, ‘Mars Landing Party’; both songs begin with a sort of chiming bell and prance off into a state of gleefulness. No doubt the only person prancing about after hearing ‘Speak In Tongues’ was Molko himself as the song is rancidly unedgy and fruitless, basically the direct opposite of the lyrics which urge another to move on and build a new world for the sake of others. I half expected Bob Geldoff and Midge Ure to pop up out of my CD player singing ‘Feed The bloomin’ World!’ but sadly that was an elaborate fantasy. ‘Speak In Tongues’ is utterly forgettable and seems to revel in its state of uselessness with a tune that wants to make the track seem a little daring and ruthless but instead comes across as desperate and ill-fitting on what’s meant to be a rock album.

But I do quite like the imposing baseline...

‘THE ATOM WILL IMPLODE/THE FRAGILE KINGDOM FALL’ (Lyrics from ‘The Never-Ending Why’)
Finally, a Placebo song which sounds like the Placebo of old! With energy, vibrancy and a bit of feeling, ‘The Never-Ending Why’ can’t resist reintroducing those stupid bell sounds but, overall, the track has a good, quick pace which is very jumpy and an enjoyable listen. ‘The Never-Ending Why’ has a nice little break down of guitars which resembles in the bands first hit single, ‘Nancy Boy’: the guitars are piling up and piling up to create the music equivalent of a car crash – but in this case only your eardrums get hurt! ‘The Never-Ending Why’ really is one of the stand out tracks on the album, although not without its faults in terms of the implausible ‘ars’ in the background upon the second chorus, it has a great, jittery pace to it which explodes out of nowhere, especially after a couple of tepid and unemotional tracks like ‘Speak In Tongues’ and ‘Bright Lights’. It’s a song which urges the listener not to try and figure out the impossibilities of life but to simply ride with them until they pass and I think it’s one of the most genuine and plausible messages you can decipher from ‘Battle For The Sun’.

‘Julien’ also seems to be a Placebo song of old in terms of its dark subject matter and buzzing guitar backing. Molko seems to be telling someone that their fate is set in stone and how they’re destined to be their own maker, the grim reaper standing on their own shoulder and swinging the scythe and waiting for the moment to end it all. The song begins with a similar synthesiser sound that Darren Hayes tampered with on his album ‘The Delicate Thing We Made’ with the song ‘Setting Sun’ but ‘Julien’ progresses into the personification of a Placebo track: lyrics of hopelessness and drudgery against the pleading electric guitars and a drum beat even Steve Hewitt would be proud to call his own. ‘Julien’ does steal the guitar sounds of ‘Bionic’ from Placebo’s first album and samples the hidden track ‘Evil Dildo’, using both excellently as if the pressure is metaphorically being loaded until the character eventually cracks. Molko’s vocals are finally sublime here with evolve from dark and brooding in the first minute or two into a burst of angst and to a credible higher pitch afterwards. I like the confused, orchestral ending to this track which is all blurred over by guitars to metaphorically represent how messy ‘Julien’s’ life is.

Deciding that after a song of ‘slow motion suicide’ it was time for a lullaby. ‘Happy You’re Gone’ has a gentle, simple keyboard beginning in a soothing, less challenging tone before an aggressive guitar riff wakes you up and back into the full throttle of a alternative rock album. In spite of that, ‘Happy You’re Gone’ isn’t spectacular or anything to shout about: it does its business, has a decent refrain and is well sung but doesn’t have a defining moment that upgrades it from an album filler and into a killer single. All about moving on and away from someone who has hurt you countless times before, ‘Happy You’re Gone’ does not host an overly imaginative story and coupled with the rather sub-standard melody, ‘Happy You’re Gone’ was never going to be one of the treasured tracks on the album, but it’s an ok addition.

‘HERE COMES ANOTHER FALL FROM GRACE, I’M ALWAYS FALLING ON MY FACE’ (Lyrics from ‘Breathe Underwater’)
Fit with some more substandard, less ingenious lyrics, ‘Breathe Underwater’ has a pretty generic rock tune to match the less than inspiring vocals from Molko; this was a track where he could afford to try and take his singing to the next level and really bellow out the words but he decided not to and instead, the lyrics merely drowned amongst the imitation metal melody. ‘Breathe Underwater’ sticks with the theme of finding oneself again which is all fine and dandy but the presentation is just a rip off from other tracks on the album such as ‘Devil in the Details’. Again ‘Breathe Underwater’ is another of ‘Battle For The Suns’ tracks which just fades into obscurity and becomes another unfulfilling, boring song which did sadly start of swimmingly with a very convincing, harder rock riff which just sadly faded into a sinking My Chemical Romance tribute.

Repetitive lyrics are something that a lot of songs have for the sake of being catchy and establishing a certain notion in the mind of the listener; the chorus is often the pivotal point of a song and defines the entire tracks existence. Yet, Placebo once again bore the listener by being too recurring during the verses and ‘Come Undone’ falls into the same pit that ‘Battle For The Sun’ did lyrically. Starting off with a slow, synth tune the penultimate track on this album begins in a similar way to how the second to last track on Placebo’s third album ‘Black Market Music’ did. Like ‘A Place For Us To Dream’, ‘Come Undone’ is all about realising your own worth and trying to rescue yourself before it’s too late but unlike ‘A Place For Us To Dream’, ‘Come Undone’ has been well manufactured and emphasises the dilemma of picking yourself from obscurity with the addition of many instrumental moments that are both louder and softer in order to create the allegory of a person’s deliberation.

Although structurally very sound, ‘Come Undone’ lacks a memorable sparkle about it; you’ll listen to the twelfth track as you’re hitting the bumps with the rest of the album and for a moment you’ll get a smoother trip but the less exciting musical moments like this one come at a cost as you’re unlikely to remember ‘Come Undone’ when you take the CD out of the player, no matter how well it’s been produced.

‘DON’T LEAVE ME HERE TO CAST THROUGH TIME’ (Lyrics from ‘Kings of Medicine’)
Sadly, my worst fears of Placebo trying to take on The Beatles were not only confirmed on the documentary to this set but also in another interview with Brian Molko in which he proclaimed his love for the Fab Four and how they introduced instruments such as horns and orchestral moments on ‘Battle For The Sun’ as a tribute to the lads from Liverpool. Oh dear. In actual fact, ‘Kings of Medicine’ isn’t too bad but I guess that when I was aware of the influence of The Beatles on the final track, it kind of brought home to me that Molko has changed significantly from the days when he would openly mock Lennon and McCartney for writing too many love songs before crediting them as a phenomenon!

‘Kings of Medicine’ begins with a mellow but muted acoustic guitar before merging into the percussion and the addition of horns and string instruments. Initially I did think Placebo were ripping off ‘All You Need Is Love’ and ‘Penny Lane’ because of just how similar the horns were! ‘Kings of Medicine’ is one of those tracks where it was a pleasant addition to the album, particularly with the lesser used instruments, but by the same token, the orchestra just seemed to be added for the sake of it; if I wasn’t really listening to the album, I doubt whether I’d have noticed such instruments until the last minute of the song when they are made slightly louder so it does beg the question of how radical did Placebo want the horns to sound? However, ‘Kings of Medicine’ is one of the few tracks from ‘Battle For The Sun’ that I do want to listen to again and again– although the lyrics seem to be a random reflection of life as it happens, I personally like that and it emerges as being a triumphant final track from the album, in spite of the fact it doesn’t necessarily end in such a profound, epic way but rather with the silencing of all instruments and a final, well delivered utterance from Brian.

THE DVD – HOW IT RELATES TO THE ALBUM
It’s not the first time Placebo have released a Limited Edition DVD with their CDs; with their fifth studio album ‘Meds’, the DVD hosted a collection of interviews with Molko, Olsdal and Hewitt about the recording process of that album but ‘Battle For The Suns’ DVD release was so much more than that. Sure, there were interviews with all three band members, including newbie Steve, but there was also the story of how the band were meant to have evolved and changed since ‘Meds’ and how things rapidly deteriorated from 2006 until things started coming together for this album.

Lasting approximately forty minutes in length, the documentary was mainly a collection of poser video clips with poor amounts of information that you could have found elsewhere anyway. I did find it interesting that ‘Battle For The Sun’ was the first album the band had recorded outside of Europe, instead choosing to concentrate on their craft in an industrial estate in America. Forrest is an American (interesting note, I’m sure...) and he came across as a pleasant enough guy; like an overenthusiastic child on Christmas morning who had just consumed a weeks worth of candy canes in five minutes flat, he bounds about the recording studio with his infectious enthusiasm and plastered on smile. I do think Forrest will be manipulated by the longstanding members of Placebo eventually; he doesn’t seem to have as thick a skin as Hewitt did but I could be completely wrong and I sincerely hope I am as he did bring his ‘A Game’ with this album and did a fairly good job on drums.

Without mentioning Hewitt at all, Molko hogs the interview chair and starts rambling on about how ‘Meds’ nearly led to the band disbanding permanently. The band had apparently nearly added an r in there and became a brand. Not to be funny, or indeed challenging Brian’s ‘suburb’ judgement, but surely in the modern state of the music industry, it’s impossible for a band not to become a brand; if you continually sell t-shirts and other merchandise on your website – and include rubbish, cheap and ego-massaging DVDs with your CDs – surely you are engineering your own product? I found that a lot of Brian’s dialogue was a collection of petty whines, such as the proposition of waking up in a different city everyday whilst on touring. Big deal: you’re seeing the world, you are meant to be producing music that you love and selling it to the masses in a live environment. The DVD overall I simply found to be an annoying accompaniment to the CD that wasn’t worth the extra £2.

Stefan’s comments about all egos being checked at the door before making this album didn’t seem to come into fruition very easily...

OVERALL – IS IT A CASE OF ‘BATTLE LOST’ WITH ‘BATTLE FOR THE SUN’?
I can’t honestly believe I have just panned a Placebo album: if you had told me five years ago I’d be writing a review in 2009, completely slating their work, I would not have believed you for a single second. Placebo – along with The Beatles, of course – are my favourite band but there is something dreadfully inadequate about ‘Battle For The Sun’; many of Placebo’s albums are voyages of discoveries, each sounding completely different and boasting its own vibe from the punkish snares of ‘Placebo’ to the broken hearted ballads of ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ and onto the hip hop and experimental ‘Black Market Music’ before the incredibly mature ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’. I can’t honestly believe that Placebo have replicated so many tunes of their own on this record; if ‘Battle For The Sun’ is all about moving on, why have they taken a step backwards and reincarnated a lot of their old tunes and incorporated them within newer tracks? Don’t get me wrong, I think when Placebo did add the older sounds from songs like ‘Bionic’ and ‘Evil Dildo’ into the mix it was all well executed but I’m having trouble understanding exactly why Placebo felt the need to do that. The only conclusion I can draw is that Brian and Stefan as the lead songwriters have simply run out of new and interesting melodies for their songs and have had to revert back to their older days when they were still fresh and relevant.

Whilst it’s clearly not always a bad album, with the songs ‘Ashtray Heart’, ‘The Never-Ending Why’, ‘Julien’ and ‘Kings of Medicine’ being a breath of fresh air on an album of many disappointing numbers, ‘Battle For The Sun’ doesn’t seem to have much contingency to it and, out of the thirteen tracks, it seems as if for every good song on the album, there are nearly two poor or mediocre tracks in comparison. I didn’t necessarily pick up the feeling of optimism and hope in all of those songs, which was meant to be the general consensus for the album. Many of the songs seemed to have hints of new beginnings, like ‘Bright Lights’ and the title track but I wouldn’t go as far to brand ‘Battle For The Sun’ as Placebo’s most positive album to date, especially in light of ‘Julien’ and ‘For What It’s Worth’.

One thing that really irked me about the DVD was just how fake everything came across; no one mentioned ex-drummer Steve Hewitt by name but you got the impression that Brian in particular was blaming him for Placebo’s near demise. Molko emphasised how he wanted ‘Battle For The Sun’ to be a colourful composition (which it isn’t) and how ‘Meds’ was a emotionally dank and miserable record. Don’t get me wrong, ‘Meds’ isn’t a light and fluffy Britney Spears album but at the same time, ‘Meds’ as a record I found to be a lot more vibrant, interesting and endearing upon the first couple of listens in comparison to ‘Battle For The Sun’. In fact, after just one listen of ‘Meds’, I was smitten with it and immediately pressed the play button again because I found it such an excellent listen. ‘Battle For The Sun’ was an album I struggled to pay attention through once and upon my second listening I switched it off after the first five songs because I was so flippin’ bored of it!

Molko claimed that ‘Battle For The Sun’ was the flipside of ‘Meds’. Yes, ‘Battle For The Sun’ is the exact opposite of ‘Meds’: instead of being made up of solid, poignant songs, we are stuck with ‘Battle For The Sun’, an album that is – for the most part – a pile of pretentious, over hyped drivel with a DVD of the same shameful calibre.

Overall? Battle Lost!

QUICK STATS:
Year: 2009
Tracks: 13
Length: 52.15 mins
Buy at: Play.com - £9.95 (free delivery) 

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