Placebo: new Single, Album, and Tour Dates!!!

On 13 March Virgin Records will release Placebo’s new album, ‘Meds’

‘Meds’ will be Placebo’s first studio album since 2004’s ‘Sleeping With Ghosts’, which went Top 10 in the UK and sold 1.4 million copies worldwide. In that time Placebo have gone from strength to strength selling out 10,000 capacity arena dates all over south and central America (Q Magazine witnessed this spectacle in Mexico, awarding it a 4-out-5 rating and describing it as "a dancefloor rammed with screaming teenagers, wobbling under the weight of 15,000 pogoing bodies."), and playing to a sold out Wembley Arena to celebrate the release of their Singles Collection, Once More With Feeling, where they were joined on-stage by Robert Smith for a version of The Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and their very own, ‘Without You I’m Nothing’.

Recorded over an eight week period at London’s RAK Studios, ‘Meds’ marks the return of a very confident band who after 10 years together keep growing in stature. The first single from the album, ‘Because I Want You’, is an urgent, impassioned plea to not give up on love; three-and-a-half minutes of joyous pop, reminiscent of the band’s early work and a strong indication of what to expect from the rest of the album. For this album the band returned to their roots, stripped away the layers and got to the heart of being a live, confident rock band. This they’ve achieved with the help of producer Dimitri Tikovoi, who insisted they had to make their first record again and try everything. As Brian put it: "We allowed space for the songwriting to shine through rather than show up how clever we were and how good we’ve gotten at using the studio. We were going for simplicity rather than elaboration."

The result is not just a molten, souped-up raw roar of a record, but also Placebo’s most human collection to date. Here are tales of fragile souls freaking out because they’ve forgotten to take their medication (‘Meds’, which features VV of The Kills), of the blear-eyed shame of the bathroom mirror in a narcotic comedown dawn (‘Cold Light Of Morning’), of "your friends who are making extremely bad lifestyle choices" (‘Song To Say Goodbye’), a beautiful, thoughtful ballad (‘Follow The Cops Back Home’), and mysterious, haunting songs (‘Space Monkey’). Here are stories - subtly unfolded - of loss, confusion, revenge, love, addiction and dependence.

The band will launch their world tour in S.E. Asia next month, at the Bangkok 100 Rock Festival, and arrive in the UK in April. They play Rock Am Ring/ Rock Im Park in Germany, 2nd and 4th June, co-headline the Friday night at the Isle of Wight Festival with The Prodigy on 9th June and then headline Nova Rock Festival in Austria on June 16th and Interlaken Festival, Switzerland, on June 17th.

‘Meds’ will be preceded by the single ‘Because I Want You’ on 6 March.

Placebo are one of the UK’s most successful bands of the last 10 years, having sold one million albums in the UK and 6 million worldwide.  

Forthcoming UK tour dates:

To celebrate the release of their forthcoming fifth album, ‘Meds’, Placebo take to the road in April to play their first UK shows since their amazing sell-out Wembley Arena show back on November 5th 2004.

Since the band last played the UK, they have toured the world extensively, taking in every continent, culminating in a sell- out tour of South and Central America, where they played to tens of thousands of screaming fans per night (Q Magazine witnessed this spectacle in Mexico, awarding it a 4-out-5 rating and describing it as "a dancefloor rammed with screaming teenagers, wobbling under the weight of 15,000 pogoing bodies.").

The band release their new single ‘Because I Want You’ on 6th March. It was added to the XFM Daytime playlist seven weeks upfront and has been championed by BBC Radio 1 DJs Jo Whiley, Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq. The band caused hysteria last week when over 1000 fans turned up at the video shoot for the single.

The tour dates are as follows:

Wednesday 5 April - Blackpool Empress Ballroom- 01253 292029/ 0161 832 1111
Thursday 6 April - Glasgow Academy- 0870 169 0100
Saturday 8 April - Newcastle Academy- 0870 771 2000
Sunday 9 April - Birmingham Academy- 0870 771 2000
Tuesday 11 April - London Alexandra Palace- 020 7403 3331/ 020 7734 8932/ 0870 5344 4444

The tour goes on sale from 9am on Friday 3rd February.

www.placeboworld.co.uk

Photograph of Placebo -
Photographer: Nadav Kander
Date: December 2005
Copyright: Nadav Kander