Placebo - Sleeping With Ghosts

Recorded at The Town House and Sarm West in London across 2002 and 2003 with Jim Abbiss producing, Sleeping With Ghosts is the record where Placebo swapped a good deal of their guitar for synthesizers and drum machines, and where Brian Molko wrote the closest thing to love songs he has ever allowed himself. It reached number 11 in the UK and has quietly become the album from the catalogue people reach for most.

"Bulletproof Cupid" opens it instrumental and jittery, then "English Summer Rain" sets the actual terms: cold programmed rhythm underneath unusually warm melody, a combination the whole album keeps returning to. "The Bitter End" is the anthem and still the song that detonates a room. "Special Needs" is the slow devastation, all held breath and regret. "Protect Me From What I Want" was a deep cut in 2003 and has since found an entirely new audience two decades on, which nobody involved could have predicted. "Centrefolds" closes things out in five minutes of drift.

Abbiss gave the band space they had not had before, and the result is a record that sounds icier and more intimate at the same time. Twenty years later it plays as the moment Placebo stopped being a nineties band and became something more durable.

Remastered at 360 Mastering, housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed lyric inner and pressed at Optimal. On Elevator Music.