Depeche Mode
Delta Machine

I've never been a die-hard fan of Depeche Mode, and aside from a couple of albums that marked the times, my attachment to this now thirty-year-old band is based more on individual songs than on albums or periods of production. However, I recognize that Martin Gore and company have managed to capitalize best on what they sowed in the '80s and have remained—alongside U2—the only globally famous survivors of an era now consigned to posterity.

The new album Delta Machine exaggerates and contrasts two essential elements of this professional phase of the group: the bluesy backbone of the writing, the lyrics, and the mood and the increasingly orthodox use of electronics. This creates a mélange that is at least interesting in today's pop landscape, where synthesizers and guitars seem to have once again divorced.

At times, Martin Gore seems to have more America in his soul than the rocker crooner Gahan, considering he hasn't abandoned since the days of "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" the predilection for riffs on six strings, as well as for lyrics steeped in melancholy and mystical flashes. The entirety of Delta Machine is permeated by a southern shiver that brings the analog frills and elegant digital farts through the pages of the Gospel; which I understand not simply as the sacred writings of the New Testament, but in a broader sense as a manifestation of faith, love, and dogmatic revelation.

And if, on one hand, the profusion of electronic sounds highlights a title (and a cover) shrouded in urban and technological modernism, on the other hand, there are the photos in the underbrush and the sentimental-religious declarations telling us that Depeche have definitively embarked on the path of mediation. Thus, after two very similar albums—predictable given the reconfirmation of Ben Hillier in production—they continue to offer us a synthetic blues that alternates melody and rhythm without betraying the original roots so loved by early fans and without disappointing tastes and needs of a broader current audience.

Sure, it's impossible to find tracks here that excite the mind and heart like "Enjoy The Silence" or "Never Let Me Down Again," which became icons not just of the band but of an entire phase of the global music scene (covered by everyone in a thousand ways, in fact). I doubt the majestic and heart-wrenching "Heaven" could become, over time, an evergreen song good to use in a perfume commercial as much as in a football event ad. Similarly, the delicate technomusic of "Secret To The End" or the ancestral lullaby of "The Child Inside" can substitute the imperishable tracks from the Depeche historical discography. And when the lazy strumming of "Slow" and "Goodbye" once again retrace the strolls among the desert cacti that already entertained us back in the days of "I Feel You," there's no doubt about the sure, comfortable, and universalist direction that the Basildon trio is following with professional diligence and commercial insight. Also because in the 17 tracks of Delta Machine, in the end, there's really everything, and the world tour with stops at all latitudes will once again demonstrate how necessary a certain resilience is to survive at these levels for over thirty years.