Depeche Mode release new album Memento Mori and go on tour

For millions of Depeche Mode fans, the hot season has begun. On Thursday evening in the US city of Sacramento, the band started a world tour, and on Friday morning the new album Memento Mori was released. And if concerts have always served as a first-class attraction for all lovers of noisy time, then the album turned out to be good record news for the first time in two decades.

Reporting from Sacramento is in full swing. The basketball arena is full, whole families are in line to enter, the audience is clearly waiting for their idols. In the new show, Depeche Mode perform twenty-three songs, starting with the new My Cosmos Is Mine (the track also opens the Memento Mori album) and completing their set with the triumphant Personal Jesus, which became one of their crown concert numbers back in the nineties.

The only posters for this tour are Dave Gahan and Martin Gore. The band’s keyboardist Andy Fletcher died last May from an aortic dissection, and the remaining members dedicate a new stage of DM’s biography to the memory of their friend and colleague. During the performance of World In My Eyes, one of Fletcher’s favorite tracks from the Violator album, a black-and-white photograph of Andy freezes on a huge screen, and this dedication moves many to tears.

Dave and Martin are now a little over sixty, by modern standards it is still a very rock and roll age, so the vigorous physical form of the artists, in general, is not surprising. Dave’s baritone still sounds dark, mysterious and very sexy, and on stage the frontman easily copes with the function of a bundle of energy. Depeche Mode concert shows have long been events where the audience is guaranteed to delight in hits and atmosphere. With albums, things are less happy.

The newest Memento Mori is the band’s fifteenth full-length release, and it comes out in a situation where the Depeche Mode catalog can already be sorted out. The first DM album was released in 1981, but only on the fifth disc called Black Celebration (1986) did the musicians show their true potential. Electronic darkness and great songs became an alliance that still impresses today.

A year later, on Music For The Masses, the musicians jumped even higher, if not in terms of conceptual beauty, then definitely in terms of the abundance of the planetary scope of hits. In 1990, with the album Violator, they managed to get three platinum and perform a real commercial miracle. And three years later, miracles again moved to the musical plane. Songs of Faith and Devotion was filled with mesmerizingly beautiful and dramatic songs that seem to be designed to remind both their songwriters and fans of the magical times when such records could come about.

True, the tour in support of this album almost killed the band in every sense. The artists had to take care of their own health, understand what they would do next, and as a result, Depeche Mode entered their new stage without keyboardist Alan Wilder, who decided to start a solo career.

However, 1997’s Ultra was a solid album, and it’s rightly called Depeche Mode’s last uplifting release. It would be wrong to call five albums released by the group in the new century a failure, but in terms of songs there were almost intrigues in them, so all these releases were perceived only as an excuse to go on a big tour.

With Memento Mori, everything is completely different. Already released ahead of the big release, the Ghosts Again single sounded like the Depeche Modes from the 80s and 90s were back, with a familiar sound and choruses that are hard to get out of your head back into their music. It is gratifying that Ghosts Again turned out to be far from the only impressive song on the new album.

The musicians themselves have repeatedly admitted that in the course of their career they fell under the influence of a variety of artists: from the fathers of synth-pop Krafrwerk to the avant-garde artists of the Velvet Underground, from David Bowie to Iggy Pop. But on Memento Mori, they seem to have fallen under the influence of themselves. In the new songs, Martin Gore, as the main songwriter, and Richard Butler, who helped him in the work, remembered what happened to the band on their best albums and tried to re-formulate it.

Sometimes the roll call of times is more than obvious. The titles of the songs People Are Good and Never Let Me Go refer to the classic hits People Are People and Never Let Me Down Again. Musically, there are no parallels between tracks from different centuries, but in modern songs, as well as in relics from the past, an anthem scope is definitely felt.

Martin Gore takes over as the vocalist on Soul With Me and allows for a nostalgic glimpse into a time when he was great at blending hot soulfulness and the cool sound of vintage synths. Don’t Say You Love Me is a tribute to the blues that has always inspired the musicians, although the Depeche Mode version is more about cyber blues.

My Favorite Stranger and Caroline’s Monkey seem to be from different planets (the first is almost a guitar number, the second is a successful attempt to extract the maximum of sadness from pop music), but on the same album they do not interfere with each other at all. Finally, the final Speak To Me resembles a prayer, though without much optimism that it will be heard in heaven. This is probably the real Depeche Mode. The darkness and nihilism in this music does not cancel the chance to stay on your feet and even feel happy.

The album itself is not available here on legal services, and there are no Russian dates in the tour map of seventy-five shows. However, in the case of DM, as with a popularly beloved band, the new Iron Curtain is unlikely to become an obstacle for those who need this music. And there is no doubt that Russian speech will be heard in the fan zones of the new Depeche Mode concerts.