Placebo: Insignificant other

By REBECCA BARRY

Placebo's Brian Molko stood on the edge of Piripiri beach and marvelled at the curvature of the earth. "I've never seen stars like that in my life," he recalls of the band's last New Zealand tour. "[I was] feeling terribly insignificant."

It's an emotion you wouldn't normally associate with the frontman of an acclaimed rock band. Since erupting on to the Britpop scene in the mid-90s, Placebo have become indie icons, as famous for their androgynous goth-glamour as their catchy yet nasal tunes Nancy Boy, Every You, Every Me, Pure Morning. They've sold more than three million albums worldwide and count Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and Bono among their friends.

Yet feeling insignificant is something Molko has grappled with for most of his 30 years. Two years ago he was diagnosed with clinical depression, a condition he blames for the years he spent trying to find himself through a notorious relationship with sex and drugs. Even the name of Placebo's new album, Sleeping With Ghosts, hints at a troubled past.

"Take a few 22-year-olds and 21-year-olds with issues who've been given a record deal, a lot of attention, a bunch of booze and a bus and send them off," he says. "What do you think's gonna happen?"

It was rock'n'roll that saved him - Protect Me From What I Want is one of the album's "exorcism songs".

"It's very interesting stuff," Molko muses. "Sometimes you have these emotions that are so unsettling and so difficult to keep within, the only way you can get them out is through the process of song-writing. And that song in particular kind of vomited forward almost completely written. Because of the state of mind I was in, because of what I was going through, it's a very, very pure song because it's written in a very instinctual way."

Molko believes Placebo was meant to be. He was living a dull adolescence in Luxembourg when he first met Swedish bass player Stefan Olsdal.

"We went to school together but we never actually spoke to each other," says Molko. "He was on the basketball team and I was in the drama club so he was cool and I was a fag."

A few years later they ran into each other at a tube station in London and "that was that. You could see it as a complete accident, you could see it as the hand of fate."

They recruited a drummer, landed a record deal and before long had become the toast of the British music press. They even impressed David Bowie, who asked the band to play at his 50th-birthday bash in New York's Madison Square Garden.

But the success of their self-titled debut and early album Without You I'm Nothing sent the band on a journey into chemical-fuelled excess. Molko found himself looking for self-esteem "in all the wrong places".

Now he is on anti-depressants, and says he is centred and 100 per cent committed to Olsdal and drummer Steve Hewitt, who he refers to as his two husbands.

"We're not 22 anymore. I'm 30. This is a lifestyle choice, an actual physical imperative. You can't party like it's 1999 anymore so therefore it has to become quality, not quantity. Hopefully, you get better at what you do and you start to recognise the responsibilities that you have - responsibilities to the people you're in a band with, to the people who have put so much blood, sweat and tears into getting you to where you are and the responsibility to your fans. You start to take it a little bit more seriously. The satisfaction you get doing it to the best of your ability is very, very important. And you party when you feel like you deserve to, like everybody should."

The band even look sophisticated, having traded in the faux fur and fancy frocks for tailored suits and shiny shoes.

"We're guilty of a lot of fashion crimes," says Molko. "Fashion has always been a part of who we are, it's an interest that we all have in nice clothes. I feel comfortable and sexy in a nice tailored suit. They're really making me feel good right now."

The trio are also into experimenting musically. The intense guitars and confrontational lyrics have made way for plaintive piano lines and synths (The Bitter End), thanks in part to producer and DJ Shadow collaborator Jim Abbiss. Molko recently worked with electronic duo Alpine Stars. And when Placebo play Auckland next weekend, they will perform a hip-hop version of Teenage Angst as well as favourite tracks from each of their four albums, (including 2000's Black Market Music).

"We're not doing ourselves any favours. The older we get, the faster and the harder we play. It's the most rock'n'roll show that we've done and the most powerful one. Previous tours have kind of dipped in the middle when we've started to do our kind of sentimental stuff. This tour is a bit more of a sonic assault. It's very physically demanding and challenging and I'm enjoying putting my guitar down, picking up a radio mic and getting closer to the audience."

They won't be playing Nancy Boy, however, the hit that launched the band in 1996.

"It's difficult for us to connect to the first album because we were a very different band," he says, referring to his turbulent relationship with original drummer, Robert Schultzberg. "Some of those songs don't have any meaning to us anymore, like I guess Creep doesn't have any meaning to Radiohead anymore, Shiny Happy People doesn't have any meaning to REM anymore."

Thankfully, these days, the latter song seems to have more meaning to Molko.

Performance

* Who: Placebo

* Where: Auckland Town Hall

* When: Saturday July 19