When Placebo first hit the charts in the mid-1990s, Brian Molko's thick black eyeliner and androgynous posturing caused a bit of a stir, as much for being naff as for being genuinely shocking. A decade on, Topshop has announced that its new range is all about goth, while the media is saturated with stories about goth nightclubs, goth vicars and goths cutting up their arms. Molko now comes across as an elder statesman of this scene - and, compared with all the new panda-eyed emo bands, his music sounds rather accomplished.

Placebo's new album, Meds, has met with critical acclaim, and provides at least two of tonight's stand-out tracks. Follow the Cops Back Home brings a respectful hush to Alexandra Palace, with its sad, quiet wisdom, while Post Blue is more guitar-charged. With lines about veins that bleed, pills that bring you down and "the special way we fuck", it occupies the emotional territory that Placebo have always excelled in - that of never-ending adolescence.

Indeed, Molko's cheeks have curious red lines across them tonight, as if he's been having a go at himself with his fingernails, but otherwise he's calm and surprisingly unostentatious. He engages in little audience banter, preferring to let the music speak for itself. It's tempting to suggest that his recent fatherhood has mellowed him, though he still decries monogamy and heterosexuality as abstract concepts.

As a measure of how far fashion has come round to meet the band, the style mags' waif of choice, Alison Mosshart from the Kills, comes on to add her vocal part to Meds. Molko seems proud of her presence, but it's one of the album's more lacklustre tracks, and she adds little to it apart from muttering from behind her hair. "Did you forget to take your meds?" she mumbles, a question she should probably be asking herself.