Placebo

Mediolanum Forum in Assago, around 8pm. Anticipation is at fever pitch when Brian Molko appears on stage, announcing one piece of bad news and one piece of good news. After the incident in Aarhus, Denmark, where the show was stopped after just two songs for reasons still not entirely clear, it's easy to immediately fear the worst. Molko explains that the opening band, The Joy Formidable, won't be able to make it to the stage, but that they'll be replaced by a friend of his, Walter Zanca, owner of Alma Matters, a holistic studio in Milan. So the evening kicks off to the sound of gongs and spiritual vibes, in a mood evocative mood, even if not exactly in keeping with the prevailing atmosphere.

The actual show kicks off right on time, opening first with a tribute to Leonard Cohen, who had recently passed away, and then with two videos: the first is a kind of trailer representing this special tour, put together for the band's 20th anniversary, and the second is an unreleased video from 1998 for "Every You Every Me", one of Placebo's most beloved songs. It's to the strains of the iconic "Pure Morning", not heard live in about a decade, that Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal, flanked by multi-instrumentalists Fiona Brice, Nick Gavrilovic, Matt Lunn and Bill Lloyd, take the stage.

The crowd, who have travelled from all over Italy for this one and only Italian date, is in raptures, incredibly lively and responsive, and the band feels it too. Molko seems to be in a state of grace, to the point that — beyond pushing his naïf vocal style to the limit — he banters with the audience like never before. It's not a monologue, but a genuine back-and-forth that carries on for the whole show.

A full 25 songs are played: from the more recent hits ("Loud Like Love", "Jesus' Son", "Too Many Friends"), through the band's modern classics (the aforementioned "Pure Morning", "I Know", "Protect Me From What I Want", "Lady Of The Flowers", "Slave To The Wage"), to the unmissable anthems capable of whipping up even the crowd in the stands ("Special K", "The Bitter End"). And then there's the gorgeous "Without You I'm Nothing", which the band entrusts, with visible emotion, with the memory of the late David Bowie, friend, mentor and supporter of the band, who recorded this track with them back in 1999, and "Twenty Years", the symbolic song of this tour, here rearranged with Stefan Olsdal on piano.

There are also a few pleasant surprises, first and foremost the cathartic "Lazarus", B-side of "Meds", but also "Devil In The Details", from the album "Battle For The Sun" — in both cases songs that could be hailed as true anthems of Placebo's weltanschauung — and then "Exit Wounds" from their latest studio album.

Many tracks are arranged differently: "Sleeping With Ghosts" gains character, energy and pathos, "Teenage Angst" is slowed down, as already happened during the Meds tour, and "36 Degrees" is presented in its 2016 version, the one also featured on the double CD A Place For Us To Dream, that is, stretched out and saturated with dense, melancholy sounds.

Towards the end, after a brief exhortation from Olsdal never to deny who you are, "Nancy Boy" even makes a surprise appearance, played by him on a rainbow-coloured bass, followed finally by the unmissable "Infra-red" and "Running Up That Hill".

The setlist chosen to celebrate Placebo's 20th anniversary is undoubtedly balanced and diplomatic, designed to please just about everyone. And even though it would have been nice to hear a few more of the tracks usually neglected in concert, like "This Picture" and "Passive Aggressive", there's really nothing to complain about in such a birthday celebration, where there was room for both enthusiasm and regret, for wild dancing, screaming, emotion, remembrance, the urge to savour the moment and nostalgia. It all ended with an unexpected walkabout among the crowd from Molko and Olsdal, who took all the time they needed to say goodbye and thank the audience warmly, promising to see them again soon.

A show profoundly different from the band's usual gigs, precisely because of the enthusiastic, passionate atmosphere shared by everyone, brought about by the extraordinary occasion that turned this performance into a fervid melting pot of morbid catharsis, fun, emotional exploration and sound — one likely capable of winning over even the band's detractors, used to just a handful of singles.

For two hours, then, the Mediolanum Forum truly became an intimate place in which to dream. A place we belong to, twenty years on.