Pre-Coachella: Depeche Mode album review

For those in So. Cal, this weekend is the one of the largest and most eclectic concert events of the year. The 2-day annual Coachella Valley music and arts festival. Sets from Madonna, Tool and Massive Attack alongside indie rockers Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and emerging artists She Wants Revenge, Gnarls Barkley and tons more under the desert sky.

As a tribute to Saturday night's headliner, Depeche Mode, here is a review of their new album Playing the Angel provided by Behrad Karbassi:

How does a band that gets almost no airplay continue to sell millions of albums? How does a band that is often dismissed as an 80s band sell out large venues worldwide in minutes 25 years after its first release? How does a band that has had only a handful of Billboard hits boast millions of results in a Google search? They do it by writing powerful lyrics and brilliant music. Depeche Mode's messages are intelligent but not pretentious. Their words are vague and open to interpretation making them relevant to anyone who listens.

Even with 12 studio albums, several live albums and DVDs, and dozens of singles, they have managed to remain outside the mainstream music scene, almost deliberately. Their unusual videos that keep them off MTV, leaving their fans to hunt them down on the internet or desperately await their next DVD release, seem designed to keep them out of pop culture and appeal only to the truly devoted.

Depeche Mode's music has always been out of step with the trends of the day. With their use of unpopular drum track tapes proudly displayed on concert stages in their early days and the use of electronically sampled sounds long before their eventual popularity, Depeche Mode thrives on being different. Their decision to move to real drums in the early 90s was made not because of critical pressure but because they decided it was time to add a new element to their music.

The first few seconds of Playing the Angel, their newest release, immediately deliver David Gahan's matured voice, a gift that was almost lost in 1995 by his failed suicide attempt and again in 1996 by a drug overdose. Martin Gore continues to deliver ingenious lyrics that are completely devoid of the cliches that plague popular music. Gahan and Gore's three-year pursuit of their solo careers has had an obvious impact on their collaboration on this album. Their classic somber, cynical themes remain in the tracks "A Pain That I'm Used To," "Suffer Well," and "The Darkest Star." Their famed dark but romantic undertones are magnified in "Damaged People," "The Sinner in Me" and "Lilian." "Nothing is Impossible," "I Want it All" and "Macro" show a rare hopeful side of the band. New themes have also emerged on this album in "Precious" and "John The Revelator."

As if the 12 tracks on this album weren't enough to satiate their obsessed fans, the band has released three b-side tracks that reveal even more of their talents. "Free," "Newborn" and "Better Days" show a confidence in Gore's writing and a range in Gahan's vocals that must be heard to be believed. Playing the Angel proves once and for all that a band doesn't need heavy rotation radio or TV airplay to prove its talent. It simply needs to release an album of this caliber to appeal to its own generations of devoted masses. (Behrad Karbassi)