Playing the Angel

As long as we're on the subject of my latest obsessions (and we are, make no mistake about that), I should mention Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel, which I just reviewed at Epinions.com and I still don't think I've gotten it quite right. The intro to the first song, "A Pain That I'm Used To," is, indeed, painful. It is undoubtedly the low point of the disc. If you can get past that (and I couldn't for about a month), the rest of it is superb.

It's about the vocals. I've come to understand something about contemporary pop listening to this album -- one of those instances in which an idea that's been in the back of your head for a while suddenly jumps up front and says "Hey! Pay attention!" One can, quite justifiably, say that all pop music is about the vocals because the vocals carry the melodic line (unless you're talking about hard-core punk or metal, in which there is seldom a melodic line anyway). This is something else again. It's David Gahan cutting loose (and Martin Gore, in the two tracks he sings) and losing that tendency toward preciousness that has sometimes marred his leads in the past. The pose is gone and what we have is some devastating music. It's a sense of genuineness that I've never really felt in their music before, and it makes the album.

Almost as good as the Forging Scene from Siegfried.