Dream on

Depeche Mode’sExciter

By Ted Drozdowski

SINCERE: the music matches the misery of the message on Depeche Mode’s new Exciter

Both Aerosmith and Depeche Mode now have songs called “Dream On.” This is the only thing they have in common short of playing arenas and making piles of money. Aerosmith’s number is an anthemic rocker about perseverance. Depeche Mode’s is the rst tune on their new Exciter (Reprise), which is appearing 20 years after the English pop group’s debut, Speak and Spell. And in a creative sense it’s a summation of their work: instead of preaching hope, their “Dream On” dourly predicts that pain will be the reward of perseverance, especially in endeavors of the heart. Steven Tyler might disagree. But not Depeche Mode’s fans, who have thrilled to the psycho-torture that leaks from the pen of the group’s principal songwriter, Martin Gore.

Throughout their rst dozen years, Depeche Mode cast their epic hopelessness within a peppery pop framework. The S&M-themed “Master & Servant” and “Never Let Me Down Again,” the exploration of the racial/social divide “People Are People,” the greed-head slam “Everything Counts,” and the ironic portrait of a godless universe “Blasphemous Rumors” all thrive on zingy melodies and chipper synthesize r lines, plus affable singer Dave Gahan’s spare, nursery-rhyme vocal lines. Gahan is himself a poster boy for the group’s candy-coated misery. Several years ago he attempted suicide. So, to paraphrase Johnny Rotten, he means it, man.

Cruel kidding aside, sincerity is one of Depeche Mode’s most attractive qualities. That’s why the few songs of redemption and promise in their catalogue, perhaps most notably the 1993 smash “I Feel You,” are so appealing. The new “Freelove” and “Shine” provide balm on Exciter. “Freelove” rings of Christian doctrine in its commitment to give love generously to others. “Shine” is also a spiritual number, with the sweet lure of transcendence in its references to learning to y.

These blatantly spiritual themes represent a sharp about-face from the deadpan account of dying innocents in “Blasphemous Rumors” and its observation that “somewhere God must be laughing.” Such chinks of happiness actually began to appear in Depeche Mode’s armor of despair with the unambiguously titled Songs of Faith and Devotion, the CD that yielded both “I Feel You” and the Christly contemplation “Walking in My Shoes.” Although Exciter scrimps on none of the samples, sequences, or sonic sleight-of-hand that remain a Depeche Mode trademark, the new songs continue to investigate the organic sounds the group began to draw upon more generously in the mid ’90s. “Freelove” and “Dream On” bene t from the warm embrace of guitars. In “Freelove,” pointillistic electric notes prettify the verses, and an E-bowed six-string broadens a palette of layered keyboards at its nale. Acoustic strumming provides a bed for the revenant’s bones in “Dream On.”

Perhaps the most notable thing about Exciter is that sincerity has nally found a place within the group’s arrangements. The chocolate shell of music they’ve used for so long to cover their rotted-cherry sentiments has been stripped away, so the sound matches the message. “I Am You” uses dark streaks of synthesizer to conjure threatening clouds, which this time are found in the veiled, hopeless, and unhealthily obsessive side of love. “The Dead of Night” arrives with the dreadful roar of a car crash; a twisted horn sample bellows like an injured ürocodile; tones buzz and natter through the mix as the singer croons, “We’re in the zombie room/We’re twilight’s parasites/We’re self-in icted wounds,” conjuring up an unsavory character portrait of lost souls. And “Comatose” sounds appropriately vaporous, polyrhythms burbling as synthesizers slip in and out of hearing while Gahan testi es about slipping in and out of consciousness.

To casual listeners, Exciter may seem like the same avor of misery Depeche Mode have been serving for years. After all, melancholy rules the bulk of these songs. But as U2’s desperate Pop and R.E.M.’s fumbling Up proved, it’s a rare band of even superstar status who can evolve as ef ciently as Depeche Mode have without straining what’s at their core.