There's a moment in Bionic when you realise that you're listening to something a bit special. The 'None of you can make the grade,' refrain moves into a guitar solo that keeps repeating throughout the song, and it's just exactly what you want the song to do.
As a debut it's a superb album. That they've never bettered it in my eyes speaks volumes about where Placebo went. It's not that they've become a bad band but somewhere along the way they lost their playfulness, the tongue firmly planted in cheek (or somewhere less appropriate) thing that makes the first album such a joy. It only surfaces on songs like Infra Red on later albums, which get way to bogged down in being taken very very seriously. Not that there aren't moments like that here, but there's a lot of fun to be had in the scatter shot lyrics, that may well have kicked about on a school pencil case at some point.
Songs wise the obvious high points are Come Home, Nancy Boy and Teenage Angst but there's so much more here than that. There's the none to subtle but vaguely ambiguous sexuality stuff throughout which sometimes deviates into self loathing, check out the 'tool' line in Hang Onto Your IQ. Funny as fuck to be honest but wrapped up in a great tune.
The thing is it is a great rock album. So vibrant and lacking in self conciousness that it never feels contrived when it so easily could. The bad rhymes and throwaway lyrics never devalue the tunes or Molko's voice which never quite sounded like this again. There's a weird delicateness to it, that just works so well on this album.
Bionic though is by far my favourite song here. Great riff, great words (there's only three lines) and a great guitar solo. It's probably an incredibly simple song to play, I guess sometimes they're the best ones.
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