Strangely enough most Goths you talk to deny the fact that they are indeed Goths. The Gothier they are the more vehemently they will deny their Gothness. Are they so Goth they are not really Goths anymore? Or do you need to actually piss black eyeliner to be a real Goth.. It's all too much for my inferior non Goth mind to ponder. But ask the same people formerly assumed to be Goths about music and they will deny that almost any given artist produces Goth music.. So it is with Placebo.
Ok eyeliner abusers anonymous, so they are not Goths. But they do belong in any sexually confused teenagers angst kit. Poppy Z Brite Novel - Check, Anne Rice Novel - Check, Placebo Album - Check. Placebo's latest offering Sleeping with Ghosts offers plenty of the bitchy, sharp, melodramatic, omnisexual brand of pop that has earned them their angstmaster cult following. What it also offers and what may begin to alienate them from their base audience is their increasing maturity. Brian has cut his long black hair and is hardly wearing a skerick of makeup on the album sleeve. His former glam has been swapped for an almost ascetic austerity. While Sleeping with Ghosts has tracks with the energy seen on Black Market Music and Without you I'm Nothing there are also many tracks showing genuine insight and depth.
Sleeping with Ghosts is an album that almost could have been great. There are moments of musical and insightful genius there.. and some of those moments last for entire tracks. Unfortunately between these golden moments there is a lot of trite, boring, self indulgence. It's a hard album to slot into a genre as not only is there plenty of the Brit pop based sound we are used to hearing from placebo there is also an increasing move toward electronica.
The stand out track on the album for me was the slinky, poisonous grind of Something Rotten. There are also some genuinely beguiling moments both lyrically and musically in This Picture and Special Needs. It's hard to say anything really nasty about Sleeping with Ghosts because even the weakest tracks have that sprinkling of genius. But it's just a glimmer. Frustrating!
Published at The Wax Conspiracy on Wednesday, May 21, 2003
thewaxconspiracy.com/reviews/sleeping-with-ghosts-placebo-z56/