Since Placebo made a big splash in the U.K. in 1996 with their self-titled

debut, androgynous lead singer/guitarist and American expatriate Brian

Molko has become something of a music-press icon there, regularly showing

up in various rock mags with tales of sex- and drug-fuelled decadence

currently rivaled by perhaps only Portland, Ore.'s Dandy Warhols, escapades

that

he always seems slightly apologetic for -- yet not so apologetic that the

cross-dressing, media-savvy singer would miss the next round of kicks for

anything. This version of Molko was aptly summed up in his big-in-Europe

hit "Nancy Boy," a kind of Marc-Bolan-meets-Perry-Farrell horny sing-along,

a rocking rant that was damn-near impossible to get out of your head once

you'd heard it.

However, as was evidenced on the album whence it sprang, "Nancy

Boy" was only one side of Placebo, and maybe not even the dominant side.

Musically, the band is squarely rooted in the 1980s post-punk of Joy

Division, early New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Cure and the Smiths

(whose "Bigmouth Strikes Again" Placebo once covered), and on this second

album it is these -- along with more than a touch of those gloomy Yanks,

Nirvana, whose power-trio format Placebo emulate -- blackly romantic

influences that reign supreme. Rather than the cat-scratch fever of "Nancy

Boy" and subsequent non-album tracks like "Slackerbitch" and "Miss

Moneypenny," Without You I'm Nothing deals with the afterglow of

Placebo's initial success, suffused with the sweetly melancholic emptiness

that hits when you wake up one morning knowing that you've overdone it, had

one snort, one groupie too many -- and yet would

(and will) happily do it all again.

"Pure Morning," already a smash hit in the U.K., leads things off here as

the natural follow-up to "Nancy Boy," yet in place of the frenzied vocal of

the latter, Molko now sounds detached, distanced from the action, like a

monotonal Lou Reed (a big Placebo fan, btw) detailing a litany of decadence

on "Walk On The Wild Side." "A friend in need's a friend indeed/ a friend

with weed is better," the singer recites over a background of metallic

mechanofunk laid down by the inspired rhythm section of Stefan Olsdal on

bass and, making his proper recording debut with Placebo, Steve Hewitt on

drums. The manic "Brick Shithouse" follows up strongly, sounding like an

Anglo-American merger of New Order and Nirvana, with the deceased third

party of an illicit love triangle haunting his lover from the grave: "Now

your lover went and put me in the ground/ I'll be watching when he's

around," Molko sings. "You Don't Care About Us" then forsakes subtlety and

takes the New Order fixation all the way, led by Olsdal's very Hook-y (as

in NO's Peter) bassline.

Without You I'm Nothing isn't a perfect album: At times, Molko's

heavy-success hangover gets a little too lugubrious, as on the

smack-tale death waltz of "My Sweet Prince," which falls a bit flat, and

the pretty but

insubstantial "Summer's Gone," both of which I would gladly have traded for

more uptempo rockers like the scathing "Scared Of Girls." Yet the majestic

gloom of the title track, which evokes the classic Bunnymen of Heaven Up

Here, and the fragile, self-mocking biography of "Burger Queen" (as in

"Luxembourg," the singer's hometown, and "Molko," Jewish for "queen"), which

floats lines like "Came to this world by caesarian section ... now it

takes him all day just to get an erection" over Faith-era Cure

atmospherics, more than compensate. And don't forget the smoking "hidden

track," a la Nevermind, where Placebo prove that they can do the

power-trio jam thang with any of 'em.

More than a mere placebo, then, Without You I'm Nothing proves

that Brian Molko and company are the real thing. The Burger Queen -- long

may he reign.