Word: faithfully
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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ALBUM: SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION...
...with its new album, Depeche Mode has found faith. At its core, this is still the same band that was behind such antireligious hits as Personal Jesus and Blasphemous Rumours, but on Songs of Faith and Devotion, the group uses sacred symbols to add emotional weight to its typically secular songcraft, dropping words like heaven, soul and Babylon and such phrases as golden gates, kingdom comes and angels sing. Religious terms used to drive home a nonreligious point? Clearly this English alternative rock band is seeking a new covenant with its fans...
...usual techno-pop electronics; there are slashing guitars, not just impersonal synthesizers. One track, Judas, has bagpipes; the confessional One Caress features a 20-piece orchestra, including violins; and the almost cathartic Get Right with Me comes complete with a gospel chorus, as Gahan sings, "I will have faith in man . . . Friends, if you've lost your way/ You will find it again someday...
This is a slickly produced, highly listenable album, but there is in the end a certain failure of nerve. The kind of belief that Depeche Mode places at the core of these faux faith songs actually requires the kind of deep commitment that the band seems unwilling or unable to make. The gospel-tinged Get Right with Me cuts off before it culminates, just as the music and singing are reaching a climax. In other songs, the scanning of religious symbols becomes a numbing succession, like a bored teenager channel-surfing cable networks. Judas the betrayer...
MUSIC Depeche Mode shows a little faith...