{"id":41704,"date":"2009-09-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/exciter-2\/"},"modified":"2009-09-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-27T00:00:00","slug":"exciter-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/exciter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Exciter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wake me when it\u2019s over. That was my initial thought when I first got a listen of Depeche Mode\u2019s 2001 ambient album, Exciter<\/i>. Don\u2019t let the title fool you \u2013 there isn\u2019t anything remotely exciting on this one. If anything, Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, and Martin Fletcher sound tired, bored and, over the hill. It\u2019s certainly a disappointment after the high water mark that was set with 1997\u2019s Ultra<\/i>. By toning their aggressive tendencies down, they also watered down the sound that made them successful in the first place. It was a tradeoff experiment that ultimately failed, leading to Warner Bros. dropping Depeche Mode from their artist roster.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

There are two tracks here that DM fans will appreciate, \u201cThe Dead Of Night\u201d and \u201cI Feel Loved,\u201d but both have that been there, done that better before <\/i>feel. Both \u201cI Feel Loved\u201d and the lead-off single \u201cDream On\u201d were big #1 hits in the dance clubs, but sadly, the Modern Rock chart proved elusive from this point on. The Mode members didn\u2019t seem to mind the embrace from this new audience, though from an artistic standpoint, it must have been a letdown. You see, artists that have been \u201cput out to pasture\u201d end up being taken on by club land remixers. These producers can recycle a bad song like nobody\u2019s business and make it sound great. They are the true magicians of the music world helping to keep acts like Depeche Mode alive\u2026albeit on life support.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

With three awful albums in a row, you do have to wonder how long Depeche Mode can afford to stay in the game. Both Gahan and Gore have released solo album in the interim, but neither have broken through to mainstream audiences. Languishing in an endless series of club gigs simply won\u2019t do the trick. Diminishing returns on the Depeche Mode investment will also be like prolonging the inevitable. There\u2019s something foolishly resilient about these British artists (like Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Duran Duran, Annie Lennox). They may not be popular or relevant anymore, but they keep putting out those albums regardless. Their \u201cnew\u201d music all starts to sound the same after a while, but the words \u201cend\u201d or \u201cstop\u201d still aren\u2019t anywhere to be found in their vocabulary.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The sparseness and simplicity of Exciter <\/i>should have opened up Depeche Mode\u2019s sound, but instead, it had the opposite effect. Tinkering with their formula to this extent is quite the departure, but it is not an easy fit. If anything, it makes them sound like indie amateurs. The rhymes sound forced and the musical structures are cast to the wind, resulting in tunes that are all of a single note with very little variation. These songs have no direction, so they lead the listener to a barren wasteland. With Exciter<\/i>, Depeche Mode arrived at the point of no return. As Dave sings on one of the better tracks \u201cI Am You:\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s no turning back, we\u2019re in this trap\u2026I must live with this reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":29717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6979],"rating":[5616],"class_list":["post-41704","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-depeche-mode","rating-rating-d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41704"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41704"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}