Placebo
RE:CREATED
The 1990s were a big deal for me. It was the decade in which I escaped the cult and rejected my parents’ plans for my life. At the swirling center of the violent storm of transformation was the guiding light of Placebo’s debut album. It arrived on June 17th, 1996 and it threw a beam of light on my escape path.
Many of my friends were, like me, enthralled by this record. While they were re-assessing their sexual identity, I was busy on the process of realizing there were non-toxic forms of masculinity. Perhaps you don’t need to smash things with hammers and play football to live a valid existence. When I saw the band play at Brixton Academy, it felt like coming home. Every person there was on your side and it was the most beautiful atmosphere I had ever encountered. The toilets had become social clubs, the door signs ignored as they gave just enough noise suppression to ease conversation.
Placebo have gone on to create a further seven studio albums, and still bring the songwriting genius every time. But that debut was so important to me that I was nervous about the RE:CREATED release. I wondered if the naive rawness of the original was part of the magic. The demo version of ‘Teenage Angst’ with the original lyrics was even more urgent and vital than the album version, so would this rebuilding of the record remove something crucial about the original record?
We think of this record as a director’s cut. We haven’t recreated it from scratch. We went back to the original master tapes and brought 30 years of playing these songs live back into the record.
What’s Different on RE:CREATED
When I span up the disc to see what’s changed on this record, the sonic adjustment was immediately apparent. There’s a richness and warmth here, a fullness of tone. This doesn’t feel out of place because their live sound was always bigger and louder than the studio sound on this album. There’s more, though. Things are superbly clear and there are details everywhere that bring nothing but pleasure. You do perhaps lose some of the details from the drums as a sacrifice for all these other gifts, perhaps the crisp hi-hat work is more subtle than it was, but it’s all still there – just less prominent.
The uplifts in the sound do nothing to dampen the vibrant urgency of the original. ‘Come Home’ still fells like it’s bouncing out of control down a hill, ’36 degrees’ is a rush, and ‘Nancy Boy’ has that sexy slow body wave vibe, with the boosted feel of the alternative version on the single. ‘Teenage Angst’ trades crispness for a fullness of sound, while ‘Drowning By Numbers’, a song I utterly adore, gets a promotion from b-side on ‘Come Home’ to bonus track on RE:CREATED along with the ‘H.K Farewell’ instrumental.
This project was about finally finishing the record, dragging it into the 21st century sonically, while preserving the integrity and the spirit of the original. It’s not about improving it, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s about completing it.
When we made the first album, we didn’t yet have the experience or the studio knowledge to fully translate what was in our heads. Over the years, the songs took on a life of their own on stage; they grew, they developed, they kind of completed themselves.
It’s a celebration of where we began, and a meeting point between who we were then and who we are now; a way of honoring that innocence, while letting the songs exist with the scale, confidence, and energy of the band we’ve become.
The True Test
The true test of RE:CREATED is simple. When I want to listen to the record, which disc will I pick. The 30-year-old one from the nineties, or this re-imagined version. The honest answer is I think I’ll listen to them both. There will be times I wanted to be awash in the sonic splendor of this new version and there will be times when I want to hear all the naivety of the original, just as I sometimes search out that blue cardboard sleeve they sent to Silver Rocket members that has the disc with original demo recordings.
Teenage Angst Re:Created
Watch Placebo – ‘Teenage Angst (Re:Created)’.
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