Watching the soundcheck before the Melbourne Arena show, it’s clear the main motivating factor behind Placebo remains the music. Rather than getting their guitar techs to run through songs like most touring bands, Placebo painstakingly pick over riffs and drum loops, working out new songs as they check levels. From where I’m standing, Molko’s voice sounds fragile, lonely, painfully lost. The songs, meanwhile, sound almost resolutely upbeat. It should cause for an interesting juxtaposition if it stays that way. Back in the dressing room, as the band apply their mascara, I ask Molko if he’s going to fall into the classic third album trap. “Songs about touring?” the singer asks, grasping my point. “Oh yeah,” he laughs. “Totally. Does this eyeliner look good on me?”
”Sure,” I reply. The singer laughs again.
”There isn’t a great lyrical bent to the band right now,” Molko explains. “It’s about the music. The last album was very pensive and introspective, because all our relationships were falling apart. It was very fragile, very naked. The next album may be more optimistic.”
When I last saw you, you said you were going to relocate to New York. “Yeah, I always think about it,” he replies seriously. “But I started having a serious relationship with someone in Paris. To change continents right now would be too self-destructive. I should allow myself to be happy. We’re booked into a London studio for three months at the end of the year. We need a city vibe for the next record: the pollution, the noise, the gigs, bad habits, all that stuff, to keep it going. We’re not going to repeat ourselves. ‘Pure Morning’ was a vindication, and a pointer.”
Hewitt passes by, wearing a tight, see-through shiny black top. I ask him what his vibe is on the new songs.
”I don’t have a fucking clue,” replies the drummer candidly. “Sleazy. It feels underage, in a teenage-wife kind of way, in a ‘I’ll get you while you’re young, you slag’ way. The first album was party, the second album was coming down from the party, the thrid one is ‘I’m going out again, but don’t tell anybody’.”
”It’s more emotional, more playful. It feels very Swedish. A lot of nice, brittle melodies. Teacher/pupil relationships, they’re sweet. I had a few crushes at school - mostly on English teachers. Female English teachers, they’re fucking sexy.”
To say that Placebo are obsessed with sex would be an under-exaggeration. They fucking love it.
”We found an Internet porn site which was a live link up to Amsterdam, where you actually type in what you want them to do,” Molko laughs. “No-one believes it, of course, but then you ask them to wave at you - and they do! It’s hilarious!”
”My favourite Internet porn site is this enema porn site: loads of photographs of women with tubes up their butts and shooting their enemas out into pans.”
Is it in real time?
”No, just photos.”
He sighs, then brightens up again.
”Still, they’re very explicit.”
