While I've intentionally discounted acts as focus-grouped and market-tested as Britney and Mandy from my considerations, the UK trio Placebo have always struck me as the most calculating of bands. Black Market Music, the third installment of Placebo's rolling plan, only strengthens my convictions. The title alone justifies my concerns. Not only does it cause us to think that the music is illicit and illegal, it also overtly references one of London's hippest record shops, Black Market Records. (25 D'Arblay Street, close to Oxford Circus, backpacking vinyl fiends!)
Placebo's eyeliner-and-lipgloss power-pop will never compare favorably with the masters of the trio, the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, the Jam, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And frankly, that's not the band's aim. Their aim, apparent from their first days on the scene as London Suede emulators, is to sell consistently androgynous product to teenagers titillated by someone else's bisexuality. Frontman Brian Molko is as convincing in this rub-me-the-right-way-and-I'll-make-out-with-you way as Brian Warner is at ducking pantomime Alice Cooper comparisons, and the closest he gets to the Ziggy Stardust he longs to be is wearing an Aladdin Sane Halloween costume.
As I suspected, Placebo retread the catchier moments from 1998's Without You I'm Nothing on Black Market Music, and roughen them up just enough to ensure top billing on commercial alternative playlists. Opening with "Taste in Men," Placebo lazily reprise the Roland 303 industrial funk of "Pure Morning." Molko begs us to change our taste in men while he simpers and kills "time on Valentine's/ Waiting for the day to end." Molko also reveals, intentionally or otherwise, that "it's been this way since Christmas time." From this disclosure, we assume that a relationship that stretches from late December to the middle of February is a long one for him. The song also features a white-noise screech that's remarkably similar to the one that begins Depeche Mode's "I Feel You." "Days Before You Came," no doubt, revels in the "come" double-entendre, as well as the flagrantly phallic imagery of "a horn of plenty." The song, a sad retread of "You Don't Care About Us," proves that solipsism and self-plagiarism are now the band's most exercised skills.
Placebo get that much meaner for "Special K"-- probably not a paean to Kellogg's weight-watching breakfast cereal. Though lyrics like, "Coming up beyond belief/ On this coronary thief/ More than just a leitmotif," and, "Can this saviour be real/ Or are you just my seventh seal," are undeniably clumsy, Molko one-ups even these lines by referencing a series of trip-hop compilations in the couplet, "You come on just like special k/ Now you're back with dope demand."
Brian Molko's hooker fantasies are paraded in the card-game-as-metaphor, "Spite and Malice," which also attempts to resurrect the career of LSD rapper Justin Warfield. "Aces take your time/ Queens are left for dead/ Jacks can stand in line/ And touch themselves instead." It's later revealed that, in this squalling streetwalker symphony, the queens are also "soft and wet" as Molko prophesizes that "everything will blow tonight/ Either friend or foe tonight."
After the product-of-a-broken-home bluster of "Black-Eyed" (how about this for masturbatory: "I was never loyal/ Except to my pleasure zone?"), Molko and his merry men tell us about a novel they've written, which they've dedicated to mom. Of course, Molko can't resist rhyming "mom" with "Uncle Tom," and spends the second half of "Blue American" questioning race relations: "I read a book about Uncle Tom/ Where a whitey bastard made a bomb/ But now ebonics rule our song/ Those motherfuckers got it wrong."
"Slave to the Wage" marks out the next target of Molko's teenage sloganeering, incorporating a clanking allusion to Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" ("Sick and tired of Maggie's Farm/ She's a bitch with broken arms"). But it's the opening lines of "Commercial for Levi" that really showcase Molko's laughable lyrical talent: "You're the one who's always choking Trojan/ You're the one who's always bruised and broken!" And how we stagger at the irony of the song's title.
Later, on "Haemoglobin," Molko gets to meet Jesus as he portrays himself as strange fruit, hanging from a tree. This self-obsession makes the Aquarian, Gaia-feminist male lyrics of James' Tim Booth seem like Cole Porter by comparison. And it's not as though Molko's voice distinguishes him when he delivers such cant; his whiny bluster has all the subtlety and attention to performance of a B-29 Superfortress.
Bassist Stefan Olsdal and drummer Robert Schultzberg occasionally break from the lite-industrial rock that matches Molko's technique blunder-for-blunder. Their most effective, lighter-waving moment comes with the duet version of "Without You I'm Nothing," which is apparently performed with David Bowie. Of course, Bowie's so far off-mike that his "presence" just seems like a marketing teaser. I'm sure, though, that it does Molko's immense ego a cosmos of good to upstage the original apostate androgyne, and the choice of this song for their duet proves that, had Bowie not paraded his kabuki man-woman on stage 30 years ago, Molko would probably be a bag-boy at Sainsbury's.
The Depeche Mode squall cut-and-pasted into "Taste in Men" is reprised for Placebo's cover of "I Feel You." While their version contributes nothing but more growling guitars to the song, I'm astounded at the restraint and grace that Martin Gore imbued his lyrics with in comparison to the shameless juvenilia that Molko screeches.
But how long can Placebo and Molko continue reprising the same themes, the same vacant power-pop bravado? I predict Molko will most likely persist in his adolescent outsider fantasies until he's 57, whereupon Placebo will disband and he'll out himself as a card-carrying Tory and rail against gays, dole-scroungers, and the demise of the British Empire. Molko has already caused me to give praise the penitential, filthy-sacred lyrics of Martin Gore; now I'm forced to appreciate Steven Tyler, who, damnit, at least had the courage of his convictions when he cast his daughter in the "Crazy" video.
The one sustainable quality that the songs Black Market Music possess is their resistance to parody. However hard I tried, Molko's lyrics outdid me in glammy doggerel. My best attempt is as follows:
"Libertine swigs ListerineEphedrine makes bad dreamsBut I'm the reigning queenStrawberries and cream taste supremeBut tulips on my organ make me screamOh the pain, oh the pleasureIt's my thrill, measure for measure**Pay the bill and wipe up later."
Though my Yankovician mockery flirts with internal rhymes and gauche, hints at hardcore substance abuse, and feigns predilection for low-rent trade, Molko will always outclass me. To him be the glory!
Editor’s note: A previous version of this review contained several instances of biphobic language. They have since been removed.
