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User
Reviews 11
Approval 76%
Soundoffs 4
Album Ratings 579
Objectivity 57%
Last Active 11-14-22 10:51 pm
Joined 07-26-10
Review Comments 7,387
| Placebo Ranked (According to Brian Molko)
I've found that he actually ranked all Placebo album (up to Loud Like love) and I'll paste some parts of the interview down below each album.
Warning: The list is biased as fuck, but anyway here it is. | | 8 |  | Placebo (UK)
Black Market Music
Why is this your least favorite?
Brian Molko: I guess I put it there because I think it's the record that suffers most from having a blanket sound. We do our best to not make records that do that. It's part of our modus operandi. But it also happens to be the first time we also had a number one album, and in typical Brian Molko style, I put it at the bottom. [Laughs] I think it's a real somber record, so it doesn't really conjure up euphoria, which I suppose is what I look for in music. It was recorded during the height of our party phase, and once we had recorded all of our instruments, we had turned the studio into a place to have guests. So we spent a lot of time entertaining people while our producer spent a lot of time working on the album alone. I think if we'd been a little more involved, then perhaps there would be a little more light and color. It's quite a monochrome album for me. It's a very deep wood color, with stripes of gunmetal grey when I picture it. | | 7 |  | Placebo (UK)
Placebo
Again, it's at number seven because of the sound. It's an extremely under-produced record, but it's also the one that put us on the map. For me, it sounds quite naïve and definitely the work of a band whose first time it is in the studio. And when I say naïve I don't mean the songwriting. The sound of an album and the songwriting are two very different things to me. The songs are pretty cool. There is a certain cheek, wit, and mischievousness to them, which I like. But I remember arriving in Dublin and learning of a technological advancement called ProTools, but I didn't realize we weren't using it on this record. So it was made in a very old school way, recording to tape. So if you wanted to make an edit you had to take a razorblade to the tape. But still I remember at the time we were filled with enthusiasm. We couldn't believe someone had given us money to make a record. But we were very, very green and we hadn't learned how to use a studio as an instrument itself yet. | | 6 |  | Placebo (UK)
Without You I'm Nothing
I guess we were still learning how to use the studio, and we were looking to flesh out our sound beyond the power trio format. But it was a difficult record to make because we had a very dysfunctional relationship with our producer [Steve Osborne]. By the end of it, we weren't even talking. And it wasn't as if we'd had any major arguments. We started off not talking much anyway, and then as the months went by, it became less until there was no talking. It was such a strange atmosphere. The breakthrough track was "Pure Morning," and we didn't record that until our work with Steve was done. We recorded that during a B-side session with a different producer, Phil Vinall. That was like we were kids in a candy shop. It was borne out of chaos, because the pressure was off. So we just started playing around with all of these different sounds and that song was the result. | | 5 |  | Placebo (UK)
Battle for the Sun
This album has one of my favorite songs to play live, which is "Speak in Tongues." This is the only record that we recorded outside of the UK. There had been a recent personnel change in the band, and we'd gone from making an album that had been very claustrophobic, and we now wanted to make a record that was quite cinemascope and anthemic. It ended up being very much an album about drums and guitars. I guess it's very much the sound of a band trying to find a new identity. That's perhaps why I put it at number five.
The lyrics were a lot more optimistic.
Compared to the predecessor, definitely. That had been precipitated by a line-up change, a lifestyle change, and going from feeling at one point that my band was doomed to feeling like we had a future and I could start from scratch again. It's definitely our most American sounding record, I think. | | 4 |  | Placebo (UK)
Sleeping with Ghosts
This album is a bit of a wild card. I actually like this record because it's one of most sonically daring and electronic sounding records. It's the perfect mixture of what we were trying to do, which was fuse our sound with vintage synthesizers and old school analog recording techniques. It was around that time that Stefan and I began our obsession with old synthesizers, and we just couldn't stop collecting. A vintage synth is a very guilty pleasure for us. We find them very sexy and irresistible to buy if we see one, even if we don't need it.
The ghosts in the title seem to detail a number of your past relationships, or the ghosts of them.
Yeah, if I remember correctly, I was trying to lyrically explore memory and how reliable, how truthful memories are. Both the visual memories you re-experience but also your emotional memories, and I guess I was asking myself the question, "How accurate is it?" I think in one way or another, as time passes, we become film directors with our memorie | | 3 |  | Placebo (UK)
Meds
We couldn't have had a better album cover to represent what was going on at the time. I think it's a very accomplished record, but I am surprised that we managed to make such an accomplished record considering how shot up in the clouds we were when we made it. There was a point in time as well when the lifestyle we had embraced so wholeheartedly started to turn dark and our personal relationship with Steve Hewitt was eroding. So it was a record borne out of a lot of psychological trauma. I think it's more honest than its predecessors. It really gives a window into how we were living at that time.
What I found interesting was that you originally wanted to make more of an electronic album but your producer talked you out of it.
That's possible. [Laughs] I think we both got our way though, especially "Infra-Red," which is a very electronic track. My memory is very, very foggy from that period. I think I might have been having a nervous breakdown at the time but I wasn't aware of it. | | 2 |  | Placebo (UK)
Loud Like Love
I think this was a real turning point for us. Battle For The Sun was the sound of a band trying to find a new identity, and Loud Like Love was the sound of a band becoming very comfortable with who they are now. Around the time we had discovered the producer Adam Noble who was nearby in London, and we just gelled really well. So it was an extremely upbeat experience making that record. I think, in terms of songwriting, it marks a new change for me. Over the years, I had become more adept at telling stories, moving away more from confessionals to storytelling. Paradoxically, it allows you to be freer, more honest, and more vulnerable because you're expressing yourself through characters. I think every band is trying to write a song that transcends their identity, and exists completely in its own context without any knowledge whatsoever of what they represent, and we finally achieved that with the last song, "Bosco." It couldn't be more different from a song on our first album. | | 1 |  | Placebo (UK)
MTV Unplugged
So why is this your favorite?
For me, this is one of the most important moments in our career. It's one of the things we've done that I am most proud of. It was an amazing experience for me because it was something we'd never done before. We were rehearsing but we were also rewriting material, which finally gave us a chance to add a string section for a whole project. I've wanted to do that for a long time. It was terrifying at the time of the performance, because it was so fucking intimate. We put a tremendous amount of work into reworking the songs to fit the MTV Unplugged guidelines. I put it at number one because I am actually over the moon about this record. These songs from our past could be reinterpreted and stripped down to fit another medium, and to me that's an indicator of a good song. | |
Middle18
04.28.22 | Wow I'm surprised by his ranking and I don't think many fans would agree but he has his reasons I guess.
New album is brilliant and I'm just starting to delve into their back catalogue more as apart from Meds and BMM i only had their greatest hits. | SAPoodle
04.28.22 | Artists always rank their works in ways that fans never would and it's really interesting to delve into | rodrigo90
04.28.22 | Here's the source if u want to read the whole thing
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3bkk98/rank-your-records-brian-molko-skeptically-rates-placebos-eight-lps
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