Placebo
Plus: Color Of Fire
Roman Amphithteatre Nimes France 15.7.04

Deathless rockers put up a fight in epic surroundings
KKKK (4/5)

THERE'S ALWAYS been a sense of grandiose about Placebo. There's also a feeling that anything they do now is the last throw of the dice. So this is the perfect venue for them: a Roman gladitorial arena- now used for bull fighting- imbued with the orgiastic carnality and decadence of that empire. A place for Placebo to fight for their lives.
It's a credit to color of fire's epic pomp that they wim Placebo's fans over so early. It's also impressive that a band more used to playing the Barfly can look so at home on a stage this big. Singer Owen Richards looks every inch the star in skeletal drainpipe jeans, while the music is stunning: power, precision and beautiful harmonies that soar into the desceding dusk. Their confidence is too high too-pulling out an acoustic and singing a duet in front of someone else's crowd is brave; making it work is exceptional.
Placebo enter to 'Taste In Men', the intro dragged out into pounding techno. With the first beat of the drumand the flicker of a hypnotic light show, they obliterate all doubts about whether they can still hack it. The set is taut: hits tumble out in quick-fire succession-few longer then three-and-a-half minutes, most reminding you quite how many huge singles this band have had.
Perhaps they play too many songs tonight but France is their heartland and the surroundings deman a potent show. It's a show they deliverwith fire, energy, vigour and passion-even for songs like closer 'Nancy Boy', which they must now surely be bored to tears by.
It would be a shame were Placebo to be written off. On the strength of this, they need to exist if only to prove that bands can mature with grace and eloquence. They glide there tonight.

By Tom Bryant