LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: DEPECHE MODE

As you already know, at Les Oiseaux Exotiques, we’re always trying to offer a more interesting product. Did I say that word? I think I did. So here’s the point: on every Tuesday, there are like hundreds of albums coming out in the US and Canada. To help you sort out which one you should hear, we’ll start a new tradition here on Tuesday, which will consist of writing a full review of what other blogs call the album of the week. You’ll be able to easily find the reviews of the past weeks under the label LOVE IT ON TUESDAY, cause that’s exactly what’s gonna happen: you’ll love it on Tuesday.

Kraftwerk were playing with machines way before them, but Depeche Mode could be said to be the first band to make electro-pop - compared to the electro-prog of Kraftwerk - without making crappy disco. Now you’ll tell me that Just Can’t Get Enough is pretty close to being disco. True, but think about their later stuff, like Personal Jesus, Enjoy The Silence and Black Celebration: it's definitely pop, but it's too bad ass to be disco. And believe me, these electro dudes that fill our Top 25 Most Plays, like Boys Noize, Crystal Castles and even Justice sometimes, all owe a lot to these guys.

To be honest, you won’t be able to find anything comparable to Personal Jesus on Sounds of the Universe, but you’ll be fucking surprised how these guys totally own most of nowadays’ bands even after 29 years of existence. First, they managed to sound like 2009 rather than like 1984 and second, they haven’t lost their touch in making scary dance music. Wrong, the first single, will not only scare the shit out of you, but would also make you dance like hell if played very late in a club. There’s also Fragile Tension, probably the best song of the album with the distinctive guitar sound, In Sympathy, that could be a Crystal Castles song if it wasn’t for the voice, and the closer Corrupt, that sounds like 2099, a minute before the earth explodes.

Of course, this album also gets his share of cheesiness, with Peace, Perfect and Jezebel, but these three songs are cheesy in a good way you know, like in a funny gentle way. And they're just weak compared to rest, that's just catchy without being cheesy. When old bands try to reproduce the past – U2 can tell you about it – the result is usually pretty bad, but Depeche Mode did not seem interested to make a Personal Jesus # 2, and they got something interesting with Sounds of the Universe. There may be no instant classic on it, but we can definitely put it on top of our old band's best album of the year list.