Guide
Placebo review: Liam Gallagher’s son Gene Gallagher and his UK rock band Villanelle have released their latest single “Placebo”, and it is without question the most ferocious thing they have put out yet. The London trio have been steadily building a reputation as one of the most exciting new guitar bands in Britain, selling out headline shows before most people had even heard a note of their recorded music, and this track arrives at exactly the right moment to remind everyone why the fuss started in the first place. Grunge soaked, distortion heavy and driven by a chorus that genuinely sticks, “Placebo” is the sound of a young band finding their footing and planting it firmly.
Song Analysis (Placebo Review)
Putting “Placebo” on for the first time and realising it hits harder than you expected, is a thrill! Villanelle, the London trio fronted by Gene Gallagher, have been building toward a moment like this since they started pulling in moshpits on the strength of fan filmed phone footage alone, and this track is the payoff. It is grunge through and through, the kind of song that sits somewhere between Alice in Chains brooding and Nirvana brute force, with Gene’s vocals doing something clever in the middle of it all, staying almost loose and conversational against the wall of distortion beneath him.
The chorus lands like a dropped amplifier. Guitarist Ben Taylor stacks delays and swells in a way that would make shoegaze fans pay attention, while Jack Schiavo’s bass keeps the whole thing rooted and physical rather than drifting into atmosphere. For a band only a handful of singles deep, the confidence here is striking.
You cannot write about Villanelle without acknowledging the shadow of the Gallagher name, and honestly there is no point pretending it does not come up. Liam is one of the most recognisable rock frontmen Britain has ever produced, and Gene grew up watching that from the inside.
What is interesting though is the direction Gene has taken, because rather than chasing Britpop or Oasis era swagger, he has gone the other way entirely, back to the American records that Britpop was partly a reaction against. Nirvana, Soundgarden, the heavy side of the nineties.
His mum Nicole Appleton apparently played him a lot of that growing up, and it shows. There is a genuine passion to it that you can feel in “Placebo”, not a band going through the motions of a genre, but three people who actually love this music and want to play it as loud as possible.
What “Placebo” does really well is sit inside a tradition without sounding like a tribute act. The production, handled at Teeth Studios near Croydon, gives everything room to breathe while still feeling bruising and alive.
The title itself is doing something a bit slippery lyrically, playing with the idea of what is real and what is not, which fits perfectly with the paranoia that seems to run through all of Villanelle’s output so far. With a debut EP on the way and a festival calendar that now stretches across the Atlantic, “Placebo” feels less like a single and more like a band stepping fully into who they are. Gene Gallagher clearly has something to prove, and on this evidence, he is proving it.
Villanelle – Placebo Lyrics
(These lyrics have been transcribed before being available anywhere online and they are based purely on what I could hear)
So when the morning rolls,
I won’t ignore your calls forever
I know my friends are all in bed sniffing their keys and mirrors
So have you seen them? Pull the diseases
Out of the sheets in the winter,
You know I’m freezing, still sinking your teeth in,
And put in a seed on whoever
It’s the time,
Don’t let go,
It’s a lie,
Placebo.
Slip into me, how can they see us,
I am a needle in a haystack
I’m coming down on all of my peers,
Has one of them ever pulled back
Trapped in my tears, the weight of my fever
Is making me stick to my stomach,
Pull up on me, I will be here with my feet up.
It’s the time,
Don’t let go,
It’s a lie,
A Placebo.
It’s the time,
Don’t let go,
It’s a lie,
A Placebo.
Should be running,
Should be running again,
Should be running,
Should be running again,
Should be running,
Should be running again.
Now.
Now.
Now.
Now.
Meaning (My Opinion) (Placebo Review)
“Placebo” is a song that sits with the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to trust your own head. Gene Gallagher has described it as exploring “heightened visualizations of post session anxiety”, which in plain terms means that brutal mental space you find yourself in after a heavy night out when your thoughts start spiralling and nothing feels quite grounded or certain.
There is a reason the word placebo sits at the centre of it all. A placebo by definition is something that feels real, that your mind convinces you is working, but ultimately has no substance behind it. Gene plays with that idea throughout, asking the listener to question whether what they are feeling is genuine or just their own mind pulling tricks on them. It is anxiety dressed up as a rock song, and it works because most people have been exactly there.
What makes the theme land so well is that it connects to a thread running through everything Villanelle have released so far. Their songs keep circling back to paranoia, to that fuzzy unreliable state between clarity and chaos. “Placebo” pushes that feeling to its furthest point yet, matching the lyrical unease with music that sonically feels like being inside a spinning room.
When Gene sings the word placebo in the chorus it almost sounds like a question rather than a statement, as if he is genuinely unsure whether the comfort he is reaching for is real or just something his brain has manufactured to get through the moment. For a young band, that is a surprisingly raw and honest thing to put into a song.
Listen To “Placebo” By Villanelle (Placebo Review)
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