Placebo have shared the new single ‘Surrounded By Spies’.
Placebo recently announced details of their first album in almost a decade, ‘Never Let Me Go’, and now they’ve shared the new song about surveillance and corrupt technology, inspired by the real-life event of frontman Brian Molko finding out his own neighbours were “spying” on him “on behalf of parties with a nefarious agenda”.
The latest track follows September’s ‘Beautiful James’.
Their long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s ‘Loud Like Love’ is set for release on March 25, and they’ve also announced a 2022 headline UK and European tour.
In a statement, Brian said: “I began writing the lyrics when I discovered my neighbours were spying on me on behalf of parties with a nefarious agenda.
“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.”
Brian also revealed that he used the literary technique where written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text for the record, which the late music legend David Bowie made famous.
Brian added: “I used the cut-up technique invented by William S Burroughs and popularised in a modern song by David Bowie.
“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 track-listing for ‘Never Let Me Go’ is:
1. ‘Forever Chemicals’
2. ‘Beautiful James’
3. ‘Hugz’
4. ‘Happy Birthday In The Sky’
5. ‘The Prodigal’
6. ‘Surrounded By Spies’
7. ‘Try Better Next Time’
8. ‘Sad White Reggae’
9. ‘Twin Demons’
10. ‘Chemtrails’
11. ‘This Is What You Wanted’
12. ‘Went Missing’
13. ‘Fix Yourself’
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