Placebo - Battle For The Sun

Fair credit to Placebo, one of the few surviving 'big (little?) boys' of the '90s, they've been delivering their spunky blasts of melodic punk for nearly 15 years now, and still manage to endorse eye glitter and nail varnish with the same tenacity as a chirpy Selfridge's sales-girl. Although there's nothing here as brain-stickingly memorable as 'Special Needs' and 'Pure Morning', 'Battle For The Sun' displays a slightly more mature sound - Molko's androgynous, Americanised 'whine' won't grate ALL non-believers - and there's a few little sophisticated, sentimental belters, too. 'Happy When You're Gone' and 'Kings Of Medicine' are well worth a repeat listen or seven.

For What It's Worth

We test all our albums on a NaimUniti stereo. If we were testing for sound quality, every album would get five stars. But we're good little journalists, so we can't. Check out more at www.naimaudio.com. They make good stuff, believe us.