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Depeche Mode
Playing the Angel
(Warner)
The first words uttered by Dave Gahan on the first Depeche Mode album in four years are perhaps meant to be prophetic: "I'm not sure what I'm looking for anymore."
Yet, as Playing the Angel makes all too clear over the course of 12 songs adapted from the Violator playbook, Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher know precisely what they are looking for.
And it's the same thing contemporaries like New Order continue to seek: A way to reconcile the analogue glory of their '80s shoe-gazing anthems with the reality that pop music has come full circle while potentially leaving them behind.
Playing the Angel is a suitably dark, well-orchestrated effort to rejoin the field. And while the vintage sound often outpaces the new songs, the pioneering Gloomy Guses may well attain that elusive goal.
Certainly, tracks like John the Revelator and Nothing's Impossible walk the walk. And with lines like "I'll need a miracle to help me this time," you know they can still talk the talk.
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So if they have to borrow the middle-eight melody from I Don't Know How to Love Him to complete a song (Damaged People), we can let it go. After all, it's not easy keeping one's chin down for this many years.
Track Listing:
1. A Pain That I'm Used To
2. John The Revelator
3. Suffer Well
4. The Sinner In Me
5. Precious
6. Macro
7. I Want It All
8. Nothing's Impossible
9. Introspectre
10. Damaged People
11. Lilian
12. The Darkest Star