Without You I'm Nothing - Album Review

THE CURED
More than goth, more than Rush, more than ever seemed likely

Generally, the Christian name Brian is either tarred with the insincerity of the football commentary box or condemned to middle-management cliché' (as in, "Brian works in our Kidderminster office"). Only in Monty Python's mistaken messiah has Brian achieved any kind of kind of cultural legitimacy and then on ironic terms. Not so, interestingly, within rock'n'roll, where the Brian roll call is both diverse and vital: Eno, Jones, Connolly, Wilson, Epstein, May, Johnson, Poole, Setzer, Ferry, Adams and, in the spirit of generosity, Harvey. As new recruit Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, has jettisoned his given forename in the name of artistic rebirth, it's down to Brian Molko, ladyboy mouthpiece of Placebo, to carry the torch into the next century. Although a very small man, he's currently looking eminently qualified.

Already a budding poster child for times both sexually permissive (Dana International, Bill Clinton, David Beckham's sarong) and retrogressively punky (Chumbawamba, return of the Mohican, Her Majesty the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips having her tongue pierced), 26-year-old Molko brings a refreshing internationalism to the world of British pop. An American raised in Lebanon, Liberia and Luxembourg -- which is where he met Swedish bassist Stefan Oldsal – he formed Placebo in 1995 in London after studying drama at Goldsmith's. Northwich-born drummer Steve Hewitt completes the geographical triangle, and the sexual one too – he is straight, Oldsal is gay, Molko is anybody's.

More influenced by Siouxsie & The Banshees' Dear Prudence than The Beatles' original, Placebo became the perfect anti-Britpop band, as their self-titled 1996 debut album sold over 130,000 copies in Britain and spawned the Top 5 hit Nancy Boy. Their position of power and influence – simultaneously adopted by the smartened-up metal magazines and cooed at by the broadsheets – may have been localised (the only managed an additional 80,000 albums around the rest of the world, a trifling 2,000 of which changed hands in America), but their telephone rang off the hook ("Hi! It's U2/David Bowie/Micheal Stipe/the director of Velvet Goldmine here"), and by the end of 1997, it was hard to write the band off as a mere goth anomaly. While they recorded this follow-up album, over the sea in uncharted America, Bauhaus re-formed and Marilyn Manson became the biggest rock band in the country.

If nothing else, Placebo's non-musical reputation precedes the album with which they hope to break eyelinered America. There is unpleasant talk of them "leaving a trail of blood and spunk across the country", their drug use is brazen, and Molko has proven himself to be something of a goer, glimpsed at his debauched nadir drunkenly trying to get off with the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon in a Manchester hotel bar. All of this is relevant, since the appeal of the first album – fast, frenzied, predatory – lay in its approximation of a wild, illicit party; while this one – slower, rumpled, more reflective – is the perfect antidote. It's a classic hangover album, the sound of the morning after the record before.

It begins with Pure Morning suggesting a conceptual masterplan, but hold hard. It was recorded during post-rest-of-the-album B-side sessions, and elevated to single status by a salivating record company. A formidable thumper, it's a step forward from previous spiky fare, with its John Bonham-style drums, but it's unrepresentative. Then, Brick Shithouse is another red herring, a reminder of the debuts 36 Degrees. In all, a confusing start.

However, You Don't Care About Us – so gentle and melodic, it could be New Order – sets a more languid trajectory which never goes away. If the mood seems relaxed, unease seeps from Molko's warbling vocal, hitting overdrive around the chorus with the repeated line "It's your age/It's my rage".

Ask For Answers emerges from a heat haze of bleary twangs and tickled cymbals, shifting, via some sympathetic brushwork from Hewitt, into a beautiful lament. Molko's voice, previously used to effect as a paint-stripper, here sounds balmy and smooth. The entire song sounds in danger of floating away at one point, dragged back by a chiming Durutti Column riff for it's voiceless denouement.

The title track is even slower ("Tick... tock") but more melodramatic, a spurned Molko gathering the last vestiges of self-respect around him like ripe bedsheets. The Crawl might be the trademark Slow One on a Cure album, which, if it sounds like faint praise, isn't, for it's captivating. This is categorically not a "going out" record, although the nagging guitar throughout Every You Every Me interrupts the two-paracetamol ambience with a slap in the face. The album's post-coital theme is whipped up into a mission statement of abstemious intent on the album's spookiest track, My Sweet Prince: "Never thought I'd have to retire/Never thought I'd have to abstain/Never thought all this could backfire/Close up the hole in my vein". In waltz time and piano-led, it is the album's haunted house song, the singer's loneliness exaggerated by the space created around him. It could have come from Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith & Devotion and producer Steve Osborne should be applauded for his restrained minimalism.

Summer's Gone supplies a welcome Johnny Marr jangle, as English as a tarpaulin over centre court or a shut pub, leading eventually into the soothing, six-minute closing address Burger Queen. There is a further evidence of Cure fixation in the guitar, but, once again, Molko's voice is the star, dishing out more information that anyone required about a rum protagonist who takes "all day to get an erection" and "never scores... just gets an infection". And thus, the romantic and chemical comedown is complete.

It's been said before: the drugs don't work, but what exquisite songs they can make people write. Although raw and personal, Without You I'm Nothing is a generous and inclusive record. While a sub-Therapy? workout like Scared Of Girls does neither the mood nor quality control any favours, and those opening two tracks comprise a false start. It survives as a brave, balls-out achievement.

Many of the debut's serrated edges have been instinctively filed down, but instead of leaving Placebo sounding toothless and spent, this exposes a depth of feeling and breadth of palette that becomes them. Molko is renowned for his dirty mouth, but on Without You I'm Nothing he finds new ways of using it, through poetic sexual euphemism ("Your smile would make me sneeze when we were Siamese") or cheeky, rugby-song humour ("Her younger sister/Had a blister/Where I kissed her").

There is little doubt that the post-Oasis pop firmament needs a challenging character like Molko. As such, Placebo could've easily trotted out some more of the same and kept their deposit, and it's to their credit that they've fashioned an album of such honesty and scope – proof that there's more to them than a set of interesting passports, a racy reputation and a girl's haircut.

And Brian? He may not be the messiah, but he's a very naughty boy.****

Q ('97)

(thanks to Mark)