Sony Music Depeche Mode - Exciter

2001 ( remaster 2017 )

Andrew Fletcher,  Dave Gahan,  Martin Gore


[ Rolling Stone ] : Depeche Mode should be horribly burnt out or split up by now: They lost their initial songwriter, Vince Clarke, after their 1981 debut; their principal musician, Alan Wilder, after their eighth album; and their sanity in 1995, when singer Dave Gahan became a heroin addict and attempted suicide. It’s easy to forget that these Essex, England, unlikelies have been around as long as R.E.M., U2 and Duran Duran. But unlike those titan troupers, they never made an embarrassing album (live discs aside) and never became so huge that they overstayed their welcome. Even at the peak of their late-1980s teeny-bopper popularity, these quintessential synth-poppers somehow remained punk. Lingering in gorgeously melodic, genuine sadness, Gahan, Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher still have the knack for turning a lifelong bummer into one big black celebration.

But even old reliables have their ups and downs, and Depeche Mode’s tenth studio album ranks miraculously high. Produced by Bjork collaborator Mark Bell, Exciter glimmers like a gentle ambient doodle with vocals: The beats are mostly minimal, closer to early Kraftwerk than to current electronica. But because Gore’s songwriting is so focused and Gahan’s vocal presence is so commanding, the softest songs leap to the foreground like a whisper from a lover.

Although they integrate guitars and orchestrations with greater finesse, the skeletal arrangements leave Gahan no harmonic place to hide, no singalong choruses to coast. Lips pressed against the mike, the rehabbed frontman turns in his most physically intimate, emotionally masterful performances on unearthly ballads like “When the Body Speaks.” Yet he also proves himself capable of summoning bygone sleaze on the album’s hilariously sullied, sole industrial jam, “The Dead of Night.” And on one of Gore’s vocal cameos, “Breathe,” his wounded choirboy tenor sounds grandly operatic in the Scott Walker lounge-troubadour tradition.

[ N M E ] : Goodbye drugs, hello tunes, say electro-pop dinosaurs

This is the album Depeche Mode seemed destined never to make. Their last two were recorded in the teeth of Dave Gahan’s near-fatal drug addiction, with band relations strained to snapping point and their electronic agenda buried under a mudslide of riffs, resentment and rehab.

But the U2 of synth-pop emerge from their blustery rock fixation renewed vitality here. Producer Mark Bell, of LFO and Björk repute, has coaxed a kind of electro-acoustic mix from the Mode which puts clear blue water between ‘Exciter’ and their most recent experiments in techno-grunge and Wagnerian trip-hop. The texture of tracks like ‘Dream On’ and ‘Comatose’ are high-tech yet organic, couching almost folkish guitar strumming in stomach-rumbling electronica.

From this solid base, Gore’s songwriting is free to veer off into diverse and occasionally sublime directions. Hence the cheekily titled pop trifle ‘I Feel Loved’, a blast of shameless disco hedonism with a side order of existential ennui. More impressive is the cinematic ‘Easy Tiger’, which throbs and whirrs with a post-rock John Barry feel that wouldn’t feel out of place on ‘Kid A’. But the most hilarious diversion here is goth-metal stomper ‘The Dead Of Night’, a rampaging Godzilla of sci-fi glam-rock which sounds like a Panzer division invading a Marilyn Manson gig.

Gahan’s voice has never sounded this rich, and expressive. His usual stern histrionics have been largely replaced by tenderness and restraint, most notably on the string-kissed Bono-esque reverie ‘When The Body Speaks’ – described by Gore as “the Righteous Brothers playing next door to a rave” – and the serenade ‘Shine’. But better still is beatific closing number ‘Goodnight Lovers’, where Dave purrs and whispers over a gliding ambient lullaby to “all soul sisters and soul brothers”. This is the one to soften even hardened Mode-haters, a gorgeous moment of sensual healing.