Recorded in Dublin with American producer Brad Wood (Eleventh Dream Day, Liz Phair, Sunny Day Real Estate), Placebo establishes the band’s sound: tense, fast-rocking songs with cleanly articulated guitar riffs, heavy bass grooves, busy drumming, spare synthesizers coloring the margins of a few songs and Molko’s distinctive voice slicing through it all. Placebo released its debut single, “Bruise Pristine,” just as the ’90s Britpop wave was cresting and is nearly the last band standing from that scene. (The group bears no relationship to the Canadian all-female band of the same name - no matter how effeminate Molko makes himself look.) They appeared determined to give Suede a run for their money, with a flamboyantly glam image and emotionally ambivalent lyrics about sex, drugs and decadence. The duo recruited English drummer Robert Schultzberg (who was born in Switzerland and had known Olsdal at school in Sweden) and started out calling their new group Ashtray Heart (after the Captain Beefheart song) before settling on the name Placebo. Swedish bassist/keyboardist Stefan Olsdal and Belgian-born singer/guitarist Brian Molko - the son of an American father and a Scottish mother - met at the American International School of Luxembourg, but didn’t actually become friends until they reconnected in London several years later.
Placebo’s back story is about as multi-national as can be.
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