I picked up the
new Depeche Mode album,
Exciter, a few days ago. It's pretty good;
all in all, more inspired than Ultra. It's produced by Mark Bell, the
Warp artist who also produced Björk's material, and this is evident
in the trademark skittering glitch beats on some of the tracks, merging with
the usual synths, guitars and some lush orchestration.
There's perhaps a slight Radiohead influence in places (or perhaps that's just
the zeitgeist), as well as touches of some fellow Mute artists (Barry Adamson
and Goldfrapp come to mind in places).
As most albums, it has its stronger and weaker points (some of the songwriting
has that antidepressant-tinged blandness that crept into DM lyrics in the 90s), though the overall quality is pretty good.
It makes good background music, with echoes of the doomed romanticism
that characterised DM's best albums
(i.e.,
Some Great Reward through to
Violator).