PLACEBO – live in Oslo 2026

Text by Andrea Chirulescu

Photos by Jonathan Mazin:

British alt rockers Placebo seem to find their way to Oslo only in October – they have performed this month both in 2016 and 2022 and they’re back at it in October 2026, this time at the bigger venue Oslo Spektrum. While it wasn’t sold at its full capacity, the fact that they get to play in one of Oslo’s biggest halls indicates their rising popularity over the years, even if they don’t rely on a bunch of album releases and tours. So they certainly have a very dedicated fanbase, which gradually filled the standing and sitting areas of the venue, but certainly not from the first beat of the supporting act, which made me suspicious for a while. Yet, by the time Placebo started, you could no longer see empty seats.

The support act for the Oslo show were the Swedes in Kallsup and their alterative/showgaze tunes which took very long time to get into. It didn’t help with the concert mood that they were barely able to move around the stage – which was more than half covered in instrument setups meant for Placebo, so except their singer, nobody else seem to do much to give the extra impulse of energy for such a big stage. The vocals was also the nicest part of the music, given the pleasant and controlled voice, and just as I ended up enjoying one of their most upbeat tunes, the concert ended. The band only got thirty minutes on stage this evening, so I’ll have to maybe watch them another time to get a more decided opinion on how I like their music.

The changeover last also for thirty minutes, so that the stage minions could setup all of those covered instruments placed on the raiser next to the drumkit, the microphones for Brian and Stefan and I believe a lot of small logistic steps were needed to fix all those cameras that ended up creating the live transmission of the event, without being handheld. I’m sure this required some extra checks compared to a ‘usual’ concert. When clock reached 9PM, the huge curtain in front of the stage projected a video going slowly back in time with images of Placebo, their live or music event presence, their releases, official videos, all the way back to their defining two albums, “Placebo” and “Without you I’m nothing”, released in the 90s. Before I continue with the concert review, I want to mention how nicely impressed I was by the fact that they managed to convince most of the crowd to not use their phones throughout the show. First, by having huge images projected all over the venue pointing out that you remember the moment and not the recording. Then, a nice spoken explanation before the intro. And then, during the show, a moustacheless Brian reiterated the idea, and explained how shitty his day was, so his not-so-good mood would not get any better by seeing people with their phones up. And they also had the security folks in front of the stage shine lights in the eyes of those seen using a phone to capture the concert. All in all, a good old fashioned way to enjoy a show without having to do it through 20 screens between you and the stage.

Back to the tour celebrating 30 years of Placebo, which was pretty much a hit bonanza with songs that had the audience cheer from the first chords, as most of them were well known from their first albums. If I understood correctly, the song “Helen Keller” was a newly released one, so they also managed to add an element of novelty in a show that displays 30 years of music. The show itself was made massive through some very well engineered visuals. There were two screens on the sidd of the stage, more or less like you have at big festival stages. The backdrop of the stage was split in 5 very long stripes that each would become a separate screen, kinda managing to show the whole stage from a bigger perspective, but also sometimes being split in halves, with different images on top and bottom parts. The dynamics of the images were well tunes to the music and the images were mainly live filmings of the band members – from many angles actually – but combined with a lot of visual effects and almost never showing the same images on all the screens. Add to this some cleverly placed light spots among the long screens or some moving strips of lights (leds?) and I remember having a hard time taking my eyes from the visual part and trying to just look at the band.

Despite the bad health day, Brian actually had a nice crowd interaction, especially towards the end of the show and of course, mainly for the songs where he did leave down the guitar and only sang. His bandmate, Stefan, even went down and played the guitar climbed on the barricade, thrilling the fans in the front rows. While the other 4 members on stage don’t get much attention through their placement in the background, their contribution to the live sound is of huge importance and it’s actually cool to notice how often they switch instruments. Except the drummer and Angela Chan (on keyboards and violin), everyone else seemed to switch guitars almost every song and the bass duty also varied, as even Brian played bass on one of the songs. One downside of the concert was that, more often than not, the sound had a bad quality about it, with an overall muffed effect. Besides the vocals and Brian’s guitar, almost everything else was blended together and hard to distinguish most of the time. Eventually the violin or the keyboards started to be more audible, but it was an overall impression that Brian’s guitar was taking over the sound panel. The songs were sitll recognisable and enjoyable, but I cannot make any comments on how anyone else played that evening.

The night ended with a mad encore, first with “Every You and Every me”, then two fantastic covers. Depeche Mode’s “I feel you” and by noe Placebo’s classic cover of Kate Bush’s “Running up that hill”, which is a perfect song to be interpreted in Brian’s style. The well warmed crowd got even wilder and I hope the remaining memories and smiles will be stronger than if the people would have spent their concert trying to capture it, instead of living it in the moment.