As with everything Depeche Mode, Paper Monsters is a bit hit-and-miss. The spooky, hallucinogenic paranoia of the thick strings in ‘A Little Piece’ is undermined by execrable Hawaiian guitars in ‘Hold On’, and Gahan always seems intent on having one Marilyn Manson-esque pulsing industrial number as in ‘Bottle Living’. ‘Black and Blue Again’ is perhaps the most challenging song, an unpromising start builds slowly to a noisy climax of Reznor proportions with the nicely understated vocals proclaiming “I’m not very nice”. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Gahan is hoping to get some of this stringbased material on a future David Lynch sountrack; some tracks are similar to the work of Angelo Badalamenti. Out come the corny 808 drum sounds for ‘I Need You’. Was that really necessary? Out June 2
ARCHIVE: 4th week TT 2003
David Gahan
