One shouldn't dare to compare the two. Both are well adjusted to the rock arenas of recent times and both are a mix of people and musical styles: Garbage with their Scottish lead singer and American musicians. Placebo with its British front man, Swedish guitar player and American drummer. But this is where the comparison ends.
Placebo rocks indeed harder than its contemporaries do. So hard that Brian Molko's bittersweet lyrics are sometimes just a background sound between the crashing drums and heavy guitars. Seeing that Placebo is a trio with only three instruments to keep up the vibe, they are quite "static" on stage.
Molko did put down his guitar once and had a chance to hop from the one side of the stage to the other and back. The underlying success though, lies in Molko's voice, which has a heavy "twang": the type of "twang" that reminds you of the moan of an electric guitar.
Garbage's playground is much bigger. With the underlying pop melodies and plenty low electronic sounds, they create this band's interesting, fresh rock sounds. During the show the samples don't fall into the background and Garbage sound so much more "rounded off" than the raw guitar rock of Placebo. The pop flavour makes Garbage's music contagious, but it is Shirley Manson who fuels the show's fire.
Being supple and agile makes Shirley a combination of Bono's high kicks and late Michael Hutchence' subtle sex persona. Her graceful, almost charging moves makes her look like a second trinity of the Matrix fame. The audience eats out of her hands, while the limbs shake, rattle and roll. Unfortunately, the electronic intelligence creates problems for Garbage in the concert arena for example #1 Crush (from the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack). Without the smooth production techniques the song has little charm. Yet, they have an arsenal of hits, which kept the packed arena's audience on their feet almost throughout the show. And one won't soon forget when Manson groaned the Spice Girls chorus "Tell me what you want, what you really really want" just before playing Stupid Girl.
It was indeed a cracking doubledose, which was much more enjoyable than the "safe" sounds filling our stages from time to time.