Pitchfork

One of the most memorable concerts I've ever been to was a Placebo show-- mostly because the stage caught fire during the first song. The band never broke stride on the glam Zeppelin stomp of "Pure Morning", though-- Brian Molko just changed the song's lyrics from "A friend in need is a friend indeed/ A friend who bleeds is better" to "A friend in need is a friend indeed/ A friend with a fire extinguisher is better" as the staff of Boston's Avalon raced to put out the flames.

Molko's response to the potential disaster was revealing in a few ways: It put his under-appreciated sense of humor on full display, but it also handily illustrated the interchangeability of his lyrics-- the fire extinguisher line actually sounded OK. He's made a career (and a pretty successful one at that, with more than six million albums sold worldwide) out of milking a specific libertine personality. If you're offended by music that seems calculated, take a pass on these guys-- Molko's mix of arm's-length sleaze, studied sexual ambiguity, casual drug references, and sad-boy romantic pining is so precise you could design an algorithm around it.

What Placebo do well is deliver some pretty good glam and grunge-influenced hard rock. Molko sells his lyrics with a high, nasal voice that lends a calm sadness to lines few other singers could get away with. On their latest album, Meds, the arrangements and recordings are so airtight you could suffocate in them, with the distortion strictly compressed and neatly controlled-- everything on the beat and vocal guest spots by Michael Stipe and the Kills' Alison Mossheart so underplayed that they're nearly hidden. Steve Hewitt's drumming is so metronome-friendly it could be a machine, and the band augments him with mecha-Bonham programming on a couple of tracks. Even with the Ziploc production, this is still the most varied record Placebo have produced-- they now have more settings than "quiet" and "loud".

The album opens with the fast-paced build of its title track, though it's a bit of a mystery why when "Infra-Red" is sitting right behind it. The barbless hook goes, "Baby, did you forget to take your Meds?" and Mossheart's backing vocal is wasted saying "sex, drugs, and complications" over and over. "Infra-Red", meanwhile, has a beats-n-guitars swagger to it and a nice lead-off line in "One more thing before I shuffle off the planet," which would have made a great opening shot. "Follow the Cops Back Home" offers some pretty bad advice with its refrain of "Follow the cops back home/ And rob their houses," a strangely jokey line in a song that treads similar sonic territory to Interpol's "NYC". "Pierrot the Clown" is a better, if less dramatic, ballad, with a small army of soft-hued keyboards tagging along with Molko's melancholy croon.

"One of a Kind" kicks off with a stomping groove topped by a climbing synth loop, but it squanders some of the verse's svelte momentum with a shift to stiffly noisy guitars in its chorus. "Drag" seems to be titled with a nod to self-parody, as the song itself has nothing to do with the expected gender ambiguity, instead referring to Molko's claim that he "drags" behind the song's subject. Musically, it's the album's best rocker, playing off Hewitt's steady playing with great e-bow riffs and a memorable chorus. The best song on the record, though, is closer "Song to Say Goodbye", an angry goodbye spit over a sharp beat compromised by an intentionally out of tune piano placed low in the mix. A totally unexpected synth melody kicks in around 2:20, taking the song right through the roof as it heads off toward its abrupt ending.

If only everything was as inspired as that song. As it is, five albums in, Placebo's shocking-to-your-grandma approach hasn't really changed much, though they've developed a little more stylistic nuance. Meds isn't a terrible album, but there's very little to get excited about on it either, and Placebo's calculated naughtiness is no more convincing than it's ever been. If you've enjoyed their past output, you'll likely enjoy Meds as well, but there's no need for anyone else to bother.