Live music: Placebo - Olympia, Dublin

4/5

Middle age is problematic for many musicians. For the not-insignificant subset whose first flush of success was strip-lit with melodramatic angst and a fluid attitude toward gender norms, however, it poses particular difficulties. A case in point are Placebo, an angry goth band of the early ’90s who became notorious for singer Brian Molko’s penchant for dressing like a sad young woman.

Two decades on, Molko, now staring into the business end of his 40s, continues to front Placebo, and, judging by his lyrics, remains heartily ticked off at the howling indifference of the universe towards human suffering (specifically: his). But, no longer able to convincingly play the pallid waif, it seems a fair question whether he can fully inhabit Placebo’s older material.

Molko, flanked by statuesque bassist, Stefan Olsdaland, and new drummer Matt Lunn, had a unique solution. He skirted the group’s ’90s songbook entirely. As has been standard for several years now, Placebo gutted their setlist favourites, such as ‘Nancy Boy’ and ‘Bruise Pristine’, indie pile-drivers that navigated a careful course between camp and baroque.

Instead, the emphasis at a sold-out Olympia was songs from 2000s onwards: ‘For What It’s Worth’, from 2009’s Battle Of the Sun, was jaggedly introspective; ‘Infra-Red’ and ‘Meds’ (from 2006) traded in drowsy, comedown intensity. One highlight was a cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That HIll (A Deal With God)’, reimagined by Placebo as a brittle punk moment — a winsome dirge with razorblades up its sleeves.