I was never really a Placebo boy. In some ways, I was probably cut out to be one (at least at the relevant times), but despite having been aware of them from the time that “Pure Morning” came knelling onto the airwaves (and worked my way back to buying their debut fairly soon after), and followed them through their radio hits more or less since then, I’ve never really bought into them (by which I mean their music, natch).
“Without You I’m Nothing”, though, I think is touched by genuine greatness. Its fuzzed-out, repetitively jangling chords and the reverb of Molko’s ever-disaffected vocals, the waver of it all as he reaches the “tick, tock” section and then the crashing waves which surface and crest in those trailing desperate screeching lines before themselves being taken over by an even denser layer as the words giving the song (and album) its title are intoned over and over and you realise that the whole song has been building to this crescendo right from the beginning, and it’s all just totally everything that 90s post-grunge modern mopey alt-rock aspired to be and so rarely was.
