Placebo
Black Market Music
[Virgin]
Rating: 2.4
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 the screaming
parade of 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. We're never led to believe that Molko has sex with men-- in fact,
he's obviously about as bisexual as Tennessee Ernie Ford. Sometimes you just
have to allow a guy his own fictions.
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.
I suppose that the backstreet Black Market Music will endear itself to
gender-exploring teenagers who find the girl-on-girl action in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer "fucking awesome." Placebo seem to be tweaking their
release schedule so that every couple of years-- as a new crop of bi-curious
seventh-graders begin to "experiment"-- they can ensure a fresh soundtrack to
young boys' fashionably bi-polar circle-jerking. And best of all, it'll be
available at every mall in America! How black market!
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 teenage lesbian nympho 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 Listerine
Ephedrine makes bad dreams
But I'm the reigning queen
Strawberries and cream taste supreme
But tulips on my organ make me scream
Oh the pain, oh the pleasure
It'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!
-Paul Cooper