Sleeping With Ghosts

It’s strange to call a Placebo album ‘bright’ but while Sleeping With Ghosts was hardly a laugh riot — the continuing themes of emotional and sometimes physical extremities remained fully in place — there’s a slightly sharper focus and energy that appears throughout. There’s also reactions to the post-9/11 world, as the cascading title track hints at, though in general it stays a strongly familiar course, from the high-speed singles like “The Bitter End” and “This Picture” to the more contemplative efforts such as “Special Needs” and “Protect Me From What I Want.”