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To many, myself included, Depeche Mode is the pinacle of the New Wave movement; the arch-wavers, if you will. It was my discovery of the wealth of DM music back in 1988 or so which took me out of my musical doldrums of pitiful radio patronage to the start of my rather largish (but never large enough!) music collection. It was them, as the logical extension of my embryonic musical tastes up to that point, that set me firmly on the New Wave path and committed me to New Wave, especially the synthpop movement and it's related fields. You might think that if Depeche Mode was so crucial to my musical tastes, that I would worship the very ground they walk on, and love everything they do. This isn't entirely true. I became firmly rooted in their sound of the mid to late 80s and the earlier and especially the later periods don't impress me as much. Not only that, there is the very strange phenomenon in which there is always one song per album that I absolutely can't stand, no matter how good the rest of the album is. These are the songs I skip even when going for a full listen, and only extreme laziness about getting up and hitting the skip button will let me sit through them. As Depeche Mode developed, I didn't always develop with them. Their latest album, Ultra, I don't even own and my reasons for not doing so will appear on my reviews of Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion. Anyway, enough of my history with Depeche Mode, there is little else to say that isn't album specific, so without further ado, here's the reviews:
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