Depeche Mode has a new album. No, really. Here’s the opening of NME‘s review:
While it’s obvious what to do when you’re too old to rock (buy a stool, invest in an acoustic, learn how to play ‘In The Pines’), there’s no real career path for synth-pop acts like Depeche Mode to follow. After all, they can’t play unplugged gigs, can they? On their 12th album and 29 years into their career, the Basildon bondage boys have switched down a gear by hunting for vintage synths and drum machines on eBay, imagining an alternative past where technology froze at some point round 1990, but their desire to make futuristic music didn’t. So the album doesn’t sound old but there’s a refreshing warmth emanating from these fizzing and burbling Moogs and Parker Steinway keyboards.
I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the CD. I rarely listen to all the old DMCDs I have now, though there was a time I couldn’t get enough of Some Great Reward. The album title came from “Lie to Me,” a song that could just has easily been about politics as seduction.
Promises made for convenience
Aren’t necessarily
What we need
Truth is a word
That’s lost its meaning
The truth has become
Merely half-truth
So lie to me
Like they do it in the factory
Make me think
That at the end of the day
Some great reward
Will be coming my way
Here’s a live performance. And for those curious, here’s the video for new single, “Wrong.”