DEPECHE MODE - Playing The Angel

Rhetorical question: do Depeche Mode still need to convince anyone that they're a band capable, as few others are, of combining an indisputable and never obvious commercial appeal with a real, elevated artistic quality? If your answer is “yes”, that's your loss. If not, then all the more reason to rejoice and marvel at this, their eleventh album.

Marvel, yes: because it's astonishing to find, on an album like this, three now serene, elegant and smiling gentlemen in their forties-plus who could easily coast on their fame, as almost all their peers still active do, and as they themselves seemed destined to do too, judging by their previous “Exciter” (2001), a pleasant enough record but overall stretched thin and adrift. Instead “Playing The Angel” has us breathing a huge sigh of relief, telling us the trio has promptly found fresh inspiration and new drive.

Given that Depeche Mode have always been a formidable factory of extraordinary singles, you could sense the album's success coming right from the very first on-air appearances of the sensational “Precious”. A track already worthy of standing among their classics, one that also hinted at (or should we say hoped for?) the group's return to its true and singular sonic identity: synths pouring down like rain and melodies of unmatched fluidity and elegance, made even more precious by the voice of a Dave Gahan who's ever more composed, expressive, perfect. But DM do even more, and despite their claims of a more “optimistic” turn in their sound, here they are releasing what might actually be their darkest and most claustrophobic record yet.

The arrangement of almost every track relies on dense, heavy electronics, with a darkly introverted mood dominating even more than on “Ultra”, the great 1997 album that attempted something similar, though back then the band, and Gahan especially, was still carrying too many ghosts of the past on its back. We're greeted right away by a song that couldn't be more Depeche, “A Pain That I'm Used To”, and their signature sound is even more unmistakable on “John The Revelator”, a Bowie-esque hymn driven by rhythms as clattering as anything since “Speak And Spell”, and above all on the splendid “Suffer Well”.

But when the luminous melancholy of “Precious” arrives, we realize that this beautiful single actually serves as a counterweight within the album to mechanical, obsessive pieces like “The Sinner in Me” (almost a new “Barrel of a Gun”), and others steeped in an unfathomable gloom. A gloom that envelops a track moving enough to bring tears to your eyes like “Nothing's Impossible”, which would have fit perfectly on a “Black Celebration” or a “Violator”... And gloom also envelops the final, floating “Darkest Star” and the heartfelt “Macro”, a track on which Martin Gore (as always the author of all the songs) also takes a turn on vocals, as well as the Foxx-like “I Want It All”, a gem of atmosphere.

In the end, after a forest of spine-chilling sound effects like “Damaged People”, the most predictable track of the bunch is the still-glittering electro-pop of “Lillian”, a perfect example of what one might legitimately have expected from Depeche Mode in 2005. Instead, they wrong-foot us with a surprising and courageous album, striking a perfect balance between past and present. Which is no small thing — quite the opposite. Just ask the latest Cure, or even more so the latest New Order, for instance, whether that's an easy thing to pull off. “Playing The Angel” is thoroughly convincing and gives us a band in dazzling form, still alive and, more importantly, still vital.

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18/10/2005