DEPECHE MODE - Sounds Of The Universe

With the full-bodied genuineness of the energetic "Playing The Angel", Depeche Mode had managed to find the right balance between care and impact. Honestly not the easiest thing to pull off when you've been on the scene for a quarter of a century, and therefore deserving of equally fitting tribute. In the four years separating that album from this new "Sounds Of The Universe", Gore and Gahan have shifted their perspective and concept.

The basic idea behind the new album is to pay homage to 70s/80s futurism: synths and vintage gear, "spacey" sounds, an air/claustrophobia dichotomy, a sense of the infinite. It's not exactly a great leap into the unknown, in an age when quotation and digging up the past are daily bread and the source of plenty of fake-sounding exaltation (especially in this field): still, it's a curious move for a band that had, for better or worse, managed to adapt its trademark sound to modern times, taking care to always remain recognizable and ultimately resembling only itself and nothing else.

Launched by the single "Wrong" - a short, blunt, pulsing, radio-friendly nihilist anthem - "Sounds Of The Universe" reveals from the first listen that its heart beats in a rather different direction. The balance between songwriting and sound tips decidedly toward the latter, and rather than chasing the catchiest pop cadences, what's prioritized here is atmosphere-building. The retro, robotic flavor of the synths finds its outlet in airy midtempos like "Fragile Tension", "In Sympathy" or "Come Back", where melody is merely a means of letting the sonic structures stretch out.

The sore point of Depeche Mode's choice lies, however, precisely in their real, actual characteristics: sonic craftsmen, now lacking those flashes of genius from their early maturity, who became fine interpreters of an era precisely thanks to their classic songwriting — why not call it "pop-tune" songwriting. Stripping away warmth and incisiveness effectively means removing the substance from Gore's songs, reducing them to a form devoid of vitality: rich in class, perhaps — barring lapses into mere branding — but ultimately hollow.

So it proves pointless to pile organ, beat, guitars and keyboards into the long initiation chant "In Chains", the corpse of something already written dozens of times before, or to drift through the past of astronauts as in the as-cute-as-it-is-banal instrumental "Spacewalker". This hybrid version of Depeche Mode simply doesn't convince at all, and the strongest tracks turn out to be the most distant ones: "Hole To Feed", even though it too sounds quite... already heard, with its sharper, uncompromising stride; or better still the ballad "Jezebel", a gloomy 60s romanticism beautifully sung by Gore.

A couple of obvious b-sides ("Little Soul"), a failed single (the overwrought "Peace") and little else round off an album that falls victim to misplaced ambition, with few redeeming moments and ranking among the worst in the British band's discography.

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13/04/2009