Review: Depeche Mode – Spirit

Four years since the last disappointing Depeche Mode album release? Check. Generic title? Check. Bad cover design by otherwise amazing photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn? Check. Spirit has all the markings of yet another by-the-numbers Depeche Mode album, even before you hit play. But once you do, oh sweet lord, could it be that the band has finally got its songwriting groove back? Well, no. Just Martin Gore has. Luckily he is the principal songwriter of the two. I said two, because that third guy – is he still in the band? Who cares? I think they just call him up to pose on band photos until the tour starts. In fact, if there’s a third guy this time around, it’s producer and drummer James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco, an electro band that always brought the production and the beats, but rarely the songs. Which is enough to make him an infinitely better choice than producer Ben Hillier who helped turn the last three DM albums into such plodding sonic snoozefests.

Speaking of the last three albums, that whole pain-and-suffering shtick never sounded authentic or convincing, especially coming from a bunch of middle-aged millionaires. This time around, though, most of Martin Gore’s lyrics tackle head-on the socio-political issues of the day. About half of the songs on Spirit are explicitly political. A welcome change of thematic direction, especially to those of us who don’t fall into the 14-year-old-goth-girl demographic. Call me elitist, but I would gladly take “Poorman”, a ballad about the failure of trickle-down economics, over something as embarrassingly infantile as “Jezebel” from their album Sounds Of The Universe.

Oh, and don’t worry, Dave Gahan’s vocals are as strong as ever. He truly does sound like he means every one of Martin Gore’s words. His songwriting contributions on Spirit, however, are once again nothing to write home about. But let’s not look a fine late-period DM album in the mouth. I would go as far as to say this is musically their best album since Songs Of Faith And Devotion or Ultra (depending on your preference). Thematically, it could be their best work since Black Celebration. It’s dark, it’s hopeless, it’s got a couple of clunkers, but what DM album doesn’t? Yes, it sounds stadium-ready for the masses, but by this point does anyone look at Depeche Mode expecting reinvention? That’s precisely why Spirit deserves a spin or two, even if you did not care about their previous three or four albums.

 
Written by George Koynov

George Koynov is a Sofia-born, Berlin-based freelance copywriter with nothin’ to lose.

 
Author’s rating for Spirit

Pop Magazine’s official rating for Spirit

Rating key
MASTERPIECE a must-have
SUPERB for heavy rotation
EXCELLENT a great achievement
VERY GOOD a respectable result
GOOD worth checking out
FAIR an average outcome
WEAK not convincing stuff
BAD an underwhelming effort
VERY BAD quite a waste
FAIL a total failure