Placebo announce new album, tour, and take on privacy invasion on new track Surrounded By Spies
Placebo are back with a new album Never Let Me Go, coming your way in March.
After far too long teasing it, Placebo have finally announced that their eighth album, Never Let Me Go, will be released on March 25, 2022. To celebrate, they’ve released the second single from it, Surrounded By Spies.
Hot on the heels of September’s first single from the album, Beautiful James, in which frontman Brian Molko celebrated love in all its forms, Surrounded By Spies sees him recounting the discovery that he had unwelcome eyes on him. It got him thinking about what privacy actually means, and the dangerous roads down which its loss could lead.
“I began writing the lyrics when I discovered my neighbours were spying on me on behalf of parties with a nefarious agenda,” he says. “I then began to ponder the countless ways in which our privacy has been eroded and stolen since the introduction of worldwide CCTV cameras that now employ racist facial recognition technologies; the rise of the internet and the cellphone, which has turned practically every user into a paparazzo and spectators in their own lives, and how we have mostly all offered up personal information to enormous multinationals whose sole intent is to exploit us.
“I used the cut-up technique invented by William S Burroughs and popularized in modern song by David Bowie,” he continues. “It’s a true story told through a lens of paranoia, complete disgust for modern society’s values and the deification of surveillance capitalism. The narrator is at the end of their tether, hopeless and afraid, completely at odds with our newfound progress and the god of money.”
The band have also announced UK and Ireland dates for late next year. Get your tickets here.
Placebo tour 2022
November 2022
18 Portsmouth, Guildhall
19 Brighton, Brighton Centre
21 Liverpool, Eventim Olympia
22 Manchester, O2 Victoria Warehouse
24 Cardiff, Motorpoint Arena
26 London, O2 Brixton Academy
27 London, O2 Brixton Academy
29 Leicester, De Montford Hall
30 Leeds, O2 Academy
December 2022
02 Newcastle, O2 City Hall
03 Glasgow, O2 Academy
05 Dublin, 3 Arena
07 Cambridge, Corn Exchange
08 Birmingham, O2 Academy