what, you didn’t think i was going to let a new depeche mode album drop with­out a mas­sive review? ha! and, no box yet, it’s deliv­ered tomor­row, but you think i was going to wait until then? ha! i picked it up at best buy on the way home from school. my box comes tomor­row, so i’ll give this one to my brother for his birth­day tomor­row (and he has jury duty all day — shitty coincidence). anyways, after one listen…

some inter­est­ing superlatives:

this is the WORST mixed depeche mode album. a cou­ple track i seri­ously thought the main vocal tracks were left out and just the reverb sends were in. why the hell am i strain­ing to hear the vocals? way to go, guys. relat­edly, this album is utterly vic­tim­ized by the loud­ness war: every track has had the dynamic range squeezed out of it. for glossy pop sin­gles, this works. for an album that wants to have some nuance and have some alter­nat­ing noisy/quiet pas­sages, this is a hor­ri­ble idea.

this is strangest-produced depeche mode album. some really, well, let’s be gen­er­ous and call them “inter­est­ing” choices were made. lots of tracks have old-sounding lit­tle beat­boxes for drums. (i’ll look for­ward to hear­ing these live with eigner so there’s a real beat!) if a track had noth­ing in the way of melody (which a few do), a wall of noise was placed under­neath, as if to dis­tract (or aug­ment) the lack of hummability.

this is the “hello, i’m mar­tin gore, and i’ll be your backup singer this evening” album. (it seems like) every track has mar­tin all over the cho­rus as loud as (if not louder) than dave. that could just be the poor mix­ing, though, it’s hard to tell. mar­tin got jokes on this album, too: “there’s some­thing mys­ti­cal in our genes”, “my lit­tle soul will leave a footprint”…

this is the most redemp­tive depeche mode album. yes, it has more upbeat and hope­ful lyrics than we’re used to, but, more pre­cisely, i was ready to fall asleep dur­ing “come back”. “per­fect” was a lit­tle bet­ter, but holy crap, the last three songs woke me up. but i’m get­ting ahead of myself…

track by track:

“in chains”: i like the warbling/droney intro, though i don’t see how it relates to the rest of the song. the song is (one assumes) going to be a great opener for the show. the strange pro­duc­tion works more for this song than some of the oth­ers. love the xylo­phone buried in the back­ground. great vocals from dave.

“hole to feed” is hole in the flow and energy of the album between “in chains” and “wrong”. bor­ing. another dave song i’ll skip…actually that’s what i thought after the first lis­ten. on my sec­ond now and i like it more. if it gets cranked up a lit­tle live, it’ll be decent. kinda doesn’t rock as hard as it needs to, and after “in chains” and into “wrong” it makes a lot of sense for it to rock. really weak end­ing, though (kind of a recur­ring theme on the album).

“wrong”: i love it, but i already knew that. fits nicely on the album. some­how it reminds me of “nothing”…

“frag­ile ten­sion”: almost a great song, doomed by some stu­pid pro­duc­tion ideas. love the verses, but the cho­rus is awful. the gui­tar sounds really out of place here.

“lit­tle soul”: kind of seems like more of a sketch for a song than a fin­ished one. both this and “frag­ile ten­sion” don’t seem to end so much as they for­get to keep going. kinda weak, but pro­duc­tion is sorta inter­est­ing. an odd lit­tle tune. i keep think­ing this would be the kind of song mar­tin would nor­mally sing. the lit­tle clank­ing break is evoca­tive of “john the rev­e­la­tor” and “fools”. gui­tar at the end works, but it needs more end­ing (again). know­ing and lov­ing thomas fehlmann, i can already see how he’d remix this and how well i expect it will come out. :)

“in sym­pa­thy”: the first song on the album that makes me sit up and OOOOOH. it’s really well-done, it’s catchy, you could kinda dance to it, it’s uplift­ing. great vocals from dave and mar­tin. is this the one peo­ple said reminded them of cause & effect? i could almost see it, but DM have done it much more sub­tly… there’s a high-pitched noise that squeaks around the back­ground of the ends of the verses that reminds me to the intro of the dif­fer­ent mix of “peo­ple are peo­ple”. this will be GREAT live.

“peace”: this is the song it’s going to take the longest for my opin­ion to set­tle on. dave has never hit a note that high before! (which means that play­ing it live could be a chal­lenge.) it kinda bugs me that the epic-sounding, slightly omi­nous synths work well with the some­what cheesy lyrics and upbeat cho­rus. it shouldn’t, but it does. damn them and their skill! ;) the high-pitched perc used like a hihat in the left chan­nel is from the same drum machine as used for sven väth’s “an acci­dent in par­adise” — yep, glad i fig­ured that out. :P it does sound like an era­sure song, though. also lacks a real ending.

“come back”: kinda sounds like the bea­t­les. i hate the bea­t­les. at first i thought it was the worst-sounding song on the album. now i kinda think it’s like the flip­side to “nothing’s impos­si­ble”. it is long and repet­i­tive, though. these are pretty good lyrics for dave, too. or at least not ter­ri­bly obvious.

“space­walker”: ahhh, i’ve always liked the goofy lit­tle instru­men­tals, and this one is in the right place on the album. it’s like “stjarna” meets “the great outdoors”.

“per­fect”: the lyrics don’t seem to stick in my head. actu­ally, on sec­ond lis­ten, i like the “i didn’t shoot, i didn’t pull the trig­ger” part. from there until the end is the best part of the song. needs a lit­tle more energy and a solid end­ing for it to be a great song.

“miles away/the truth is”: after i saw this was a dave song, i thought “great, it’s the most awk­ward title in DM his­tory, i bet he tried to get all clever with the lyrics”. i was braced for the worst. instead, i got the sec­ond song on the album that made me sit up in my seat and say OOOOOH. well done, mr gahan. have a cookie. fuck, take the whole box. this is the best song you’ve ever writ­ten. the synth melody dur­ing the “you’re miles away” part is fan­tas­tic. the nas­ti­ness of it and the mood of the song reminds me of “some­thing to do”.

“jezebel”: thank you for not doing a shitty song in some super-melodramatic voice on this album, mar­tin. lyrics are pretty good, too. i can see him doing this live and enjoy­ing it and me enjoy­ing it. reminds me of marc almond (good thing).

“cor­rupt”: clas­sic sleazy mode! well, it’s no “we get wet­ter and wet­ter”, but it’s as sleazy as they get these days. i think this ends the album bet­ter than “the dark­est star”. is there a stu­dio ses­sion of this track? i can see it work­ing as a great full band stom­per. hell, i can even hear a good nick cave cover of this.

this is the only DM album i didn’t imme­di­ately get. i wrote most of this down after one lis­ten, and added to it dur­ing my sec­ond lis­ten. i gotta say, i feel much bet­ter about it now then i did when i first heard it. even the pro­duc­tion kinda makes sense. i think it’s a bet­ter album than PTA is, even though i’d say that PTA has some bet­ter songs. i also think it’s a tran­si­tional album — DM and hillier seem like they planned a trip on PTA and started trav­el­ling on this one. if we don’t get to the des­ti­na­tion on the next album, with hillier still in the car, i’m gonna be disappointed.

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