1. Kitty Litter
2. Ashtray Heart
3. Battle for the Sun
4. For What It’s Worth
5. Devil in the Details
6. Bright Lights
7. Speak In Tongues
8. The Never-Ending Why
9. Julien
10. Happy You’re Gone
11. Breathe Underwater
12. Come Undone
13. Kings of Medicine  

Released in 2009, Battle for the Sun is the sixth studio album by Placebo.  The three year wait since previous record and career high-point, Meds, had been a long one for the fans.  When at the start of 2009 Brian Molko announced that Placebo had finally recorded their new album and planned to release it in the summer, everyone rejoiced.  And we were all to go home as happy little Placebites, right?

I bring with me news of a crushing displeasure: Battle for the Sun is tremendously disappointing, particularly on first listen.  The signs for an impending dissatisfaction were all there, we only had to take notice.  A lot of fans were dismayed at the exit of drummer Steve Hewitt in 2007.  To many, this was a cause for alarm, and for some it had been reason enough to stop following the great ‘bo on their journey.  I, though, had sensed something far more worrying than a change of drummer, something potentially irredeemable and calamitous.  My children, gather around, and listen to the story of a band giving in to temptation.

Very gradually, over the years, Placebo were incorporating more ‘commercial’ elements into their work.  This is fair enough, as up to this point in time it had served a purpose to balance what was already there - gratifying originality.  I should have seen it coming, but I just didn’t expect Brian Molko to fully commit to the mainstream beast and release such a laborious set of songs as this.  It pains me to say it, but with this release Placebo have become just another alternative rock band.  The production, the songwriting, the majority of the lyrics – and whatever else - it has all been tarnished by Placebo giving in to the conventional.  Brian, the dream is over.  Kitty Litter, with its outwardly decadent introduction of ‘angry’ guitars and its borrowed theatrics from apparently every other artist in the alternative rock scene, winds up a chronic lesson in the unbearable.  Kitty Litter pretty much sums itself up via its title (although, Used Kitty Litter may have been more apt).  Rest those vocal chords, Brian, at least until you have something worth singing about.  Just as arduous is Ashtray Heart.  Getting its title from Placebo’s original name at their inception, it would have done well to stay dead and buried along with its origins.

It’s not all bad, though.  Devil in the Details is one of the record’s highpoints and can easily stand tall alongside Meds’ best songs.  Full of bombast and shot through with a knowing set of juvenile, angsty lyrics, Devil in the Details is Brian Molko at his swaggering best, “I got the devil in the details, and he’s gonna teach me wrong from right… that f*cking pantomime, the devil in the details!”  It’s the few moments like this which almost make up for the rest of the album’s shattering inadequacy.  Similarly noteworthy is Speaking in Tongues.  “Kitty came back home from on the island,” recollects Molko, “but Kitty came back without a name.  She and me’s a history of violence… I burn to touch her just the same.”  Then, just as a phoenix would emerge from a sweltering cloud of erupting ember and ash, Molko throttles his vocal chords, surfaces from the ether, and in one of his more flattering vocal performances pronounces, “So we both can speak in tongues, oooooooohhh!”

Julien – on first impression the album’s worst track – begins as little more than an electronic experiment.  Its introduction recalls the inane fodder which clogs up the airways in Spanish gay clubs (I just know these things), where a little man sporting a medallion, clutching a cocktail with a tiny umbrella in it, asks you out on a date.  It makes Basshunter look as threatening as the antichrist in full flight.  Ultimately, though, stick with it, and it develops into a cautionary tale of woe (“You can run but you can’t hide!”), replete with a great string section and sizzling guitars.

The slow ballads, which were a highpoint on Meds, no longer crackle with the bitter resentment which had carried them previously.  A couple of tracks in particular, Happy You’re Gone and Come Undone, are meagre parodies of a songwriting style that Molko had very almost perfected three years earlier.  If only Molko would wake up and smell what he is shovelling.  Although, something tells me he knows his product better than he likes us to think.  See Come Undone: “You don’t know how you’re coming across… It’s a shame (that) on you the irony is lost” A shame, indeed.

The album closer - part acoustic, part digital/piano/electric ballad - Kings of Medicine, leaves behind a sweet taste in your mouth.  Lyrically, it’s the best song on Battle for the Sun, while the emotional pull is great, “Don’t leave me here to pass through time, without a map or road sign.  Don’t leave me here, my guiding light!”  Even now, when Molko hits those high notes and reaches deep inside his broken heart for the shrill cries of discontentment, he has few rivals where poignancy is concerned.  The song begins very softly and eventually develops into a true climatic event, reaching a proper, exhilarating crescendo, before respite is provided by the convivial comedown.