Placebo - The Never Ending Why

If any of you were hoping for a throwback to the days of teenage angst and sexual experimentation, fused together by pure punk spirit that permeated classic Placebo tracks like "Nancy Boy" and "Bruise Pristine", hooking us in all those years ago, you’re going to be disappointed with latest single “Never Ending Why”.

Taken from the new album Battle for the Sun, “Never Ending Why” is an example of Placebo at their most typical. Conforming to the successful model Placebo established for their singles post-"Without You I’m Nothing", “Never Ending Why” contains everything we have learned to expect from the band: a fuzzy guitar riff, Brian Molko’s trademark nasal vocals and some forced rhyming as he attempts to unpick some of life’s mysteries. “Time will help you through/ but it doesn’t have the time/ to give you all the answers/ to the never ending why” Molko muses during the characteristically catchy chorus.

"Battle for the Sun" has been marketed as the most diverse and experimental Placebo album to date, in instrumental terms, and the overt use of the glockenspiel on “Never Ending Why” does add a new, and unexpected, dimension to the song. However, “Never Ending Why” does little to reconstruct a sound we have grown to expect from Placebo. This single is not an example of the band at their musical or lyrical best, but it is a well produced, quintessentially Placebo-esque package that is loaded with mass appeal, and when you have had a career as successful as Placebo’s you have to wonder, what is the point of trying to reinvent a sound they have clearly already mastered and their fans are still willing to accept?