Meds is the album Placebo have been trying to write forever. Finally, all the creative juices are flowing in the same direction... and what an album it is. The worst song on the album is still far better than many of the things Placebo have written, and the best stuff is positively transcendental.
This is an album that has drumming on a bike, two guest appearances, and the full spectrum of emotion, from giddy love to spiteful hate. Meds itself, is lost, scary, scared, and in love... who else would remind you when you're losing it to take your pills? (it is also my personal anthem at the moment, but that is a whole other story). Song to Say Goodbye has some scathing words that can only be born out of hurt and abandonment set to music that that sounds like it was written for something else. Post Blue is strange, pretty, and exciting; Brian spits out the word "fuck" like it's a word he doesn't use, and somehow manages to make it sound like he's making love anyway. Follow the Cops Back Home is a bit of a political protest, a bit of a love song, and a bit of a lament. If it had been on an earlier album, I would have hated it, but somehow Placebo have managed to avoid whatever went wrong with My Sweet Prince and Narcoleptic. The two standout songs, though, are Infra-red, and Drag. Infra-red has a great hook, and bounces along apace, and yet it is an anthem to just how badly things can go wrong between two people. Drag, on the other hand is a more real love song than I do, I think. It's the kind of love that can't quite believe its own luck, and is self effacing because of it. It's the kind of love I would expect, somehow, of Placebo... These two songs, for me, really say it all about Placebo:
Contradictory, caught between love and hate, of others and of themselves; beautiful, even when enraged, and surprising, even though they are jaded.
Well done, team. Because, you know, despite the fact that without you I am not nothing, without you, my life would be less.
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