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BLACK
MAGIC
[Q,
November 2005. Words: Garry Mulholland. Picture: Uncredited.]
"
Techno
godfathers and metal Goths alike continue to cite the Mode’s influence and
this album reminds you why. "
Summary:
The author of this review admits to being pleasantly surprised by the quality of
the new album and the return to familiar Mode themes without becoming
threadbare. Music to a fan's ears.
[285 words]
View pages: page 1
Try
also: "Reconstruction
Time Again" [Q, June 2001]
"Mode To Nowhere" [The
Observer, 16th October 2005]
"A La Mode Again" [The
Observer, 16th October 2005]
A quarter century old and back to their best.
For most of us, 25 years in black leather trousers would provide little but chafing. But for Depeche Mode, the enduring sartorial symbols of sex and sin still fit like a lucrative glove.
Thirty-eight UK hit singles, 13 Top 10 albums and worldwide live pulling power enabled singer Dave Gahan to finance a legendary penchant for excess. But when Gahan and chief songwriter Martin L Gore both made solo albums in 2003, a split looked inevitable. Yet here they are with their 11th studio album, their first since 2001’s Exciter. The surprise is that Playing The Angel sounds so sure and committed that it could be the work of a new band.
Recorded in New York, Santa Barbara and London with Blur producer Ben Hillier, Playing The Angel thrives on a sparse electronica that closes the distance between band and listener, coming off like an intimate late-night confession. Hillier’s preference for old-school analogue sounds over digital returns Depeche Mode to the bruised innocence of their mid-‘80s transitional period, with first single Precious nodding to their pop origins and John The Revelator mining the gothabilly seam they invented on ‘89’s Personal Jesus. Techno godfathers and metal Goths alike continue to cite the Mode’s influence and this album reminds you why.
Gahan contributes three songs which fit seamlessly. And while they remain
obsessed with dysfunction and masochism, his Suffer Well sums up the album’s
subtext of hard-won optimism. “I found treasure not where I thought / Peace of
mind can’t be bought / I still believe,” he croons, and you believe that the
reformed rockpig means it. Playing The Angel is the year’s greatest, and most
unlikely, comeback.