Depeche Mode
Playing The Angel

THE REVIEW

Yes, I know, this album has already been reviewed twice (or rather one and a half times), but honestly, and with all due respect, I think it hasn't been done full justice yet. So I want to share my opinion, hoping and deluding myself to set things right. "Playing The Angel" is truly a great album, a new surprising chapter in the series "great bands that seemed finished and yet..." even though calling Depeche Mode finished always risked making a bad impression or at least they seemed less worn out than many others. Of course, "Exciter" had left us at least puzzled, an album too pretentious, at times banal and slow, at times pleasant and at times sharp and irritating, which failed in the attempt to find a balance between melody and experimental noise, which instead had always been the strength of Depeche Mode, creating over the years fantastic and futuristic music.

"Playing The Angel" at first seems even worse! A complicated album, almost annoying, that transmits a slight sense of anxiety and offers rare melodic glimpses, an album with a fast-paced and nervous, suffering, claustrophobic, twisted and crumpled rhythm upon itself, but above all an album dark, heavy, desperate and gloomy, I dare say almost dark. Only that in the end, there's an intriguing taste left in the mouth that makes you want to sample it again, and when this happens, it means something extraordinary is about to happen...
... and indeed it happened. I'd say after at least six or seven listens, everything begins to reveal itself in its perfection, the previously hostile and dirty sounds become clear and enveloping, and everything unfolds in a kind of mysterious spell that only we who listen to "difficult music" have the patience to wait for and know how to recognize, traveling the road that leads to absolute beauty. Thus, I discover that it is precisely the sense of claustrophobia and anxiety, the being dark, twisted, and dirty, and the melancholic desperation barely contained, that make this album fantastic, which I would now define as a modern "Violator," more complicated and darker.

Twelve tracks with the same key interpretation. The first five in series, stunning, sparkling, and sharp as blades starting from the ear-splitting attack of "A Pain That I'm Used To" which is an electronic rock 'n' roll, followed by the captivating "John The Revelator" which is a sort of cyber-blues, then there's "Suffer Well" strange and tight, indeed suffering, with sounds that recall the past, and then comes "The Sinner In Me" the most beautiful of the sequence, incredible, slow, sinuous and obsessive hypnotic ride on a single note that opens into a heart-wrenching chorus and then starts pounding hard again, stuff that's good from midnight onwards, until reaching "Precious", the famous single, which may be radio-friendly and catchy but damn if it's beautiful.
Then it slows down, the sixth track "Macro" sung by the immense creator of everything Martin Gore, starts fascinatingly but then gets lost in a somewhat too lyrical structure making it seem like a piece written for a musical. And when you're about to lose the thread, suddenly the bullet hits you in the heart, it's called "I Want It All" a fantastic and inescapable song, timeless, which will remain in our memories and in the anthologies of electronic music, a perfect paradigm of the new Depeche Mode. But it's not over here, because the crime repeats itself immediately after, second bullet, "Nothing Is Impossible" delirious electronic dark tending slightly towards the gothic, with a relentless and obsessive pace, a black and dark song that's chilling. Goosebumps. Then it slows down again with a short instrumental piece titled "Introspective" followed by "Damaged People" sung again by Gore which repeats some of the shortcomings of the other.
Before the end, however, comes the third bullet, the definitive one. It has a woman's name, "Lilian" fast and sharp, melancholic and shining pop-electronic lightning, I'm almost afraid to say it, but perhaps it's one of the most beautiful Depeche Mode songs ever. The album closes with a difficult track "The Darkest Star" vague melody, slow rhythm, and twisted arrangement, fascinating but elusive, changing continually and perhaps requiring more listens (which there will be no shortage of).

Behind the CD there is a writing, six words that perfectly summarize the album and make everything I have written unnecessary: "PAIN AND SUFFERING IN VARIOUS TEMPOS".