Review: Depeche Mode, Exciter

With Exciter, Depeche Mode creates a startlingly minimalist backdrop for obsessive love.

Depeche Mode, ExciterDepeche Mode’s Exciter plays a lot like the rightful successor to Björk’s Homogenic. Producer Mark Bell successfully recaptures the sonic heights of his work with the Icelandic singer while effectively preserving Martin Gore’s guitar rock sensibility and Dave Gahan’s distinct vocal, never once permeating the band’s signature sound.

Depeche Mode’s first studio release in four years, Exciter revisits the band’s synth-pop roots with co-founder Vince Clarke (tracks like “Breathe” and “Goodnight Lovers” even recall Erasure’s recent foray into pop-tronica) as well as the pop-rock of 1990’s Violator. The industrial-strength “The Dead of Night,” reminiscent of “Personal Jesus,” was perhaps inspired by a recent visit to one of NYC’s now-defunct superclubs: “We are the dead of night/We’re in the zombie room/We’re twilight’s parasites.”

Lead single “Dream On” warns of the subsequent karmic debts amid impeccably positioned acoustic guitar loops and spliced up beats: “What you take won’t kill you/But careful what you’re giving.” Gore’s lyrics lament the darkness of desire; an ambiguous woman induces “disabilities of the strangest kind” in “The Sweetest Condition” and she’s got him “slipping in and sliding out of conscious feeling” in “Comatose,” a track that pulses with the life of said lust.

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Similarly, the haunting “When the Body Speaks” explores the delicate, co-dependent balance of the body, mind, soul, and wanton desire (“Oh, I pray too much,” Gahan sings deeply over a lulling guitar and fragile strings). The band doesn’t fully abandon organic instrumentation but, rather, weaves it throughout Bell’s bristling drum programming and pitched-up basslines, creating a startlingly minimalist backdrop for obsessive love.

Score: 
 Label: Reprise  Release Date: May 15, 2001  Buy: Amazon

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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