Depeche Mode Five Questions: Delta Machine

After being somewhat enchanted by the song Precious and the entire Playing the Angel album, including the great concert experience I had at the Palace (where LeBron had recently thrown a chair at some fan, prompting a bunch of jokes about getting into a brawl with Dave Gahan.  Needless to say, nobody threw a drink cup at Gahan, and he didn't hit anyone with a chair either.  Would've been really awesome if that had happened, though...) I was a bit disappointed at first by the fact that the Sound of the Universe wasn't very accessible other than the brilliant track Wrong.  I did pick up Sounds of the Universe fairly quickly, although I admit I didn't listen to it all that often, and overall, I'd still rate it as one of the lesser DM albums; a kind of tired retread of the "golden years" of the early 90s, which as you may recall, weren't the golden years of DM in my book (which would rather be the half decade earlier.)  So, although not terrible, it wasn't really one that I was super excited about either, and the "revival" if you will that I went through with DM because of Playing the Angel was stalling out.  And then, of course, a few years later (2013) Delta Machine came out. (►ELTA ▲▲ACHINE?) The bluesy alternative rock band with a bit of a synthesizer new wave legacy continued in the same vein; Dave Gahan went even further into that growly Las Vegas voice, and the music followed his lead (he wrote, again, three tracks on the album. although he now had a different musical partner; remember that Dave is a lyricist on the songs he's credited with only, not a musician.  He's actually pretty upfront that he doesn't really know what he's doing musically; he just has the right personality and voice to be the frontman DM needed.)

In general, given that I've talked about the trends a lot in the other reviews I've done, I'm not sure what else to talk about except this album specifically.  I'd say that it's definitely in the same vein as the last two, but the weakest of that three album series.  Whereas the smoothness; the echoes of the polished European synthpop outfit that were still present on Violator were carried forward to some degree on the other two albums, this one went with a more overtly Songs of Faith and Devotion vibe; a bit scuzzier, growlier, and dirtier sounding.  I never really liked too much of that, so bringing it even more to the forefront again isn't a good move towards getting me enthused, if nothing else.  The gospel wasn't brought back, but somehow this doesn't sound like a polished European synthesizer new wave act at all; it's almost as if Depeche Mode were trying to channel just a touch of Johnny Cash, or something, except the songs weren't generally as good.  Again; this doesn't mean that the album is terrible; even Exciter has some merit, after all, and this album is better than Exciter (although less so than it should have been.)  But most of the songs are filler, and they just aren't the kind of stuff that fits with the brand of DM very well.  Granted, that doesn't mean that they're terribly out of place, because unfortunately, over the last couple of decades, they've released several albums that don't sound like their brand (or rather, I suppose that the brand changed on me too much for me to recognize it anymore) and they've released plenty of filler tracks too.  I continue to maintain that the likely explanation is that Martin Gore is himself kinda tired and bored with writing this stuff; he can still crank it out, but it just doesn't have the genius that it used to.

Curiously, where Sounds of the Universe started out (relatively) strong and kinda faded into silliness and self-parody at the end, Delta Machine starts off relatively weak and gives a bunch of tracks that sound like DM trying to figure out who they were going to be this year, but wrapped it up a bit better.  Or maybe I'm just trying to say that the best two songs on the album are within the last three.

The worst song on the album is probably Slow, which sounds like one of the weird awkward Martin Gore ballads that even Gore got tired of and let Dave sing.  It's also emblematic of why I don't like Depeche Mode nearly as much as I used to.  I'm not a Depeche Mode cultist, as I've said before—I was a fan of polished European synthesizer music, and Depeche Mode literally created their own niche within that form as moody, dark, industrial yet also poppy, poppy yet also serious and artistic, etc.  Slow isn't an electronic music song at all.  Oh, sure; they do eventually play something on a keyboard before they're done, but it's a bit, broad, hoaky, "soulful" country-sounding song, if country were Johnny Cash trying to write some of the less memorable of the Depeche Mode oeuvre of songs.  The actual terrible Martin Gore song is The Child Inside.  It's a contender for worst song too, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone by now, but for some reason it doesn't bother me quite as much as Slow does.  Soft Touch/Raw Nerve is another one that kind of sounds like a parody of a Depeche Mode song; the kind of Dead of Night for Delta Machine.  Eagh.

Curiously, and for the first time, the Gahan songs are some of the best songs this time out; Broken and Should Be Higher join Gore's Soothe My Soul as among the better songs on the album.  Should Be Higher and Soothe My Soul were also two of the three singles released; I didn't nearly as much like Heaven, the lead single from the album and an earlier appearing track.  Alone is another decent track which wouldn't necessarily be one of the better tracks from an album like Playing the Angel, but stands out from this collection.  And the album ends weirdly; the cowboy sounding Goodbye (or wanting to sound cowboy, anyway; Martin Gore sure isn't a cowboy, so it doesn't quite work; like a cowboy trying to cover a weird European song written by someone who's only exposure to the wilderness was in a carefully controlled photo shoot situation) just is another out of place song that wandered in from another section entirely of the record store.

There's also four bonus and/or b-side songs from this era, but most of them aren't very good either; only All That's Mine is really worth bothering with.  Depeche Mode doesn't see themselves as a b-sides band; y'know, one of those bands that has great b-sides that make collecting the singles important because it's the only way to get the b-sides (Pro tip: classic Depeche Mode soundalike band Mesh have GREAT b-sides.  In particular check out the tracks Let Them Crush Us and From This Height, both from 2002.)  That said, there are some really good Depeche Mode b-sides here and there, and other non-album tracks, like a handful of non-album singles releases, so one can have hoped for better this time around.

All in all, this is probably the weakest DM album other than Exciter.  The folksy pseudo-country sound just doesn't suit them at all, and it serves to effectively mute (no pun intended) the classic DM voice.  It just feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be.  More grist for my theory that Depeche Mode is a bit tired of writing the same kinds of albums that made them famous, but sadly, every time they veer very far from that formula, they produce something that is just confusing and weird.  Maybe there are a few musical artists who are able to play successfully "outside of their lane"; I think specifically here of guys like Danny Elfman, who after being frontman and main man for that matter of Oingo Boingo went on to write symphonic film scores, where he's had a lot of success and where he appears to be quite talented.  When I was a kid, Bo Jackson was famous for being named an All-Star in two sports, the only person ever to have done so and probably the only one who ever will.

But Depeche Mode works best when they stay in their lane.  Three stars.