Saturday 25 December 2021

No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.12 - "You Don't Care About Us" (Placebo)



Placebo. There's a sad story. From one of the 90s best rock debuts to a sneering punchline in just three albums. A salutory lesson for 21st century goth bands. "You don't want to end up like Brian Molko, do you"?

There are two schools of thought on where Placebo lost it, based on whether you checked out when they started sounding cynical (Black Market Music), or simply when they stopped sounding energised (Without You I'm Nothing). I count myself in the latter camp. If Placebo sounded like a band raging aganst the dying of a light they never even been allowed to bask in, Without You I'm Nothing sounded like a band aware that access to the light came attached to financial obligations.

For all the distinctiveness of Molko's USesque nasal twang, "You Don't Care About Us" is about the only time on their second album that sounds like it came from the same band that gave us "Come Home" or "36 Degrees" (there was "Every You Every Me", too, but that got torpedoed in the cool stakes when Cruel Intentions hit and everyone wanted to sing along to it - modern hipsters have nothing on 90s goths for hating not being hated). The base riffs have all the liquid pulsating of blood squeezed from the heart, even before the filthy guitar kicks in. The vocal overdubs lay bare the tangled, mangled brain of someone tying to rev themselves up to end a relatinship they're sure their partner has checked out of.

There's an urgency to the tale, a need to be heard here completely at odds with the glib, stoned detatchment of the parent album. A story about a relationship so degraded only acceleration and damage remain as approximateions of intimacy, it turns out, trumps half a dozen tales of being, like, horny but also REALLY bored.

As Placebo themselves flamed out (without even the decency to split up - I thought this was supposed to be rock?), "You Don't Care About Us" was one of the final fleeting glimpses of a light that could have shined so much brighter.

B-side (really not sure how much in on his own joke this guy is, but I love it either way):


Plus also: