Placebo share “Try Better Next Time” from the band’s forthcoming album, Never Let Me Go out March 25th, via Rise Records.

Tracklisting:

  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


“Try Better Next Time” further opens up what we know about Never Let Me Go’s frank and honest depiction of our modern times. Where opening single “Beautiful James” revealed a stern commentary on the proliferation of ignorant opinions, and follow-up track “Surrounded By Spies” spun themes of tech-saturation, “Try Better Next Time” – the album’s poignant centrepiece – can be easy to mistake as an apocalyptic vision of the future. Instead, we find the band focusing less on endings and more on new beginnings. It’s an anthem for the end of a world that we know – not the end of it completely – and a celebration of the possibility of what might come next, whether humanity has a seat at the table or not.

When Brian Molko considers how we might “grow fins, go back in the water” it is proposed with the greater good in mind. It is the setting aside of ego in the face of eco-disaster, in recognition of all that mankind has done to the planet. The world keeps turning whether under the influence of humanity or not. Commenting, he says: “It is not the end of the world, only the end of humanity, a distinction that in our overblown hubris we are unable to detect. Mother Nature has grown extremely weary of us. Try Better Next Time.”

Tour dates have been announced and they’re only for European and UK dates for October thru December 2022.