It’s another of them free-download-from-official-site things…
[Video][Website]
[3.08]
Martin Skidmore: I always felt he would have given anything to be his generation’s Marc Bolan, and this is a noble ambition. However, with extremely unappealing nasal tones, clumsy guitar riffs, fatuous lyrics with none of Bolan’s mad poetics and so on, it was never going to happen.
[3]
Tom Ewing: All this dream brother, dream lover, barrel of a gun nonsense reminds me that Brian Molko is the Jim Morrison of our times. OK, he’s sharper than the Lizard King maybe, but also worse because he has one of those awful voices that always sounds like it’s doing an impression of itself. The rest of Placebo kick up sand like angry, but tethered, camels.
[3]
Briony Edwards: For better or worse, this song includes everything one should have grown to expect from Placebo – overly melodramatic lyrics all about PAIN (And I am the bones you couldn’t break… break… break.. Break… BREAK!!! BREAK!!!), an “epic” chorus with lots of strings and written in the minor key, and nasal and whiny vocals which leave you longing for an implement upon which to impale Molko. I do quite like the (strangely compelling) guitar work, though.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: This is pretty much half choppy ugly and half Skunk Anansie ballad except sung by Brian Molko, getting a bit more twinkly and dense and interesting in the chorus but to get to that you have to endure the most pat rhymes you’ve ever heard sung in what is the most boring melody imaginable. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not very good, good, good, good.
[3]
Doug Robertson: With Depeche Mode coming back to largely positive noises, is anyone really surprised to see Placebo bringing up the rear like overexcited puppy dogs, keen to show their beloved master the exciting stick they’ve just found? And alas, the stick they’re presenting is wooden enough to justify that somewhat tortured metaphor.
[5]
David Raposa: The portentous song title, the soft/loud switch-flip, the cauldron-stirring string section — sounds like Mr. Molko is aiming to pitch some woo towards Muse’s fanbase, though his flat trill doesn’t carry the necessary Yorke-ian oomph to complete the imitation. Which, oddly enough, causes this track to sound to me like a near-perfect approximation of Aereogramme, a histrionic (or, if you prefer, emotive) Scottish post-alt rock group that broke up two years ago. Again, though, Placebo misses the mark, for as precious as Aereogramme’s lyrical fixations might’ve been at times, they never (to the best of my knowledge) cycled through as many groan-worthy rhyming cliches as Moloko does in this track. But my love of shamelessly manipulative “Bolero”-biting bullshit abides, so haters can suck my sweet & tender nuts.
[7]
Hillary Brown: Sometimes, describing something using the word “chug” refers less to a locomotive effect of rhythm and more to the feeling of something horrible and thick sliding down one’s throat, like a wheatgrass milkshake. This song has that latter kind of chug.
[3]
Jonathan Bradley:Once upon a time, Brian Molko could deliver a line like “You are a cheap and nasty fake” and make it sound dramatic and glamorous and deliciously pulpy. He once cackled over his glammy setpieces like a drag-baiting take on Heath Ledger’s Joker. But while Placebo has always been a band that could dress up a mess and make it look like haute couture, they’re now just a mess. “Battle for the Sun” is shockingly bad; a bathetic, boring and bitterly disappointing disaster from a band who should have enough sense to know better.
[0]
Ian Mathers: It’s actually kind of like a merit badge to be a successful band for long enough to sound exhausted and totally out of ideas. But it also means you should stop.
[3]
Additional Scores
Iain Mew: [3]
Dave Moore: [3]
Hazel Robinson : [2]
Alex Macpherson: [1]