Depeche Mode: Construction Time Again era

The album. The singles. The songs. The tour.

The Cure, going nowhere

There are varying opinions about when The Cure stopped being great - some say they're still great, some say they peaked with Disintegration and are on the way down ever since, some say they couldn't really recover after Pearl (known as Porl at the time) and Boris left, but I truly enjoyed Wild Mood Swings (not a flawless album, but definitely not as bad as people usually think), I really liked Wrong Number and then the Bloodflowers album, and even Cut Here was really good (let's forget about Just Say Yes for a moment), so I was quite happy with their output until they left Fiction. I'm not suggesting that leaving the label was what caused the decline, but something went wrong after that.

The best album ever

I'm cheating a bit, because it's not a proper studio album but a live one. Anyway, 101 by Depeche Mode is my ultimate desert island disc (cheating again, it's 2 discs on both vinyl and cd), the one I can never get tired of, the one I listen to the most, simply put, the best album ever.

Violation

The period between 1986 and 1994 is largely considered as "the golden age" of Depeche Mode, the era of their creative and commercial peak. Even the band members seem to agree with that, given that their tour setlists heavily rely on material from those years ever since. They released 4 studio albums during that time, and 3 of those came out in mid-March, so last week was filled with opportunities to look back: Black Celebration turned 29 on Tuesday, Songs Of Faith And Devotion became 22 years old on Sunday, but a quarter of a century mark seemed more interesting, so most of the attention concentrated on Violator's anniversary on Thursday.

What kind of man loves a song like this?

The kind I am, for example. And the song in question is "What Kind Of Man" by Florence + The Machine.

Imaginary setlist for Cinderella's Eyes

Unfortunately, Nicola Roberts' excellent debut album wasn't promoted by a long series of live gigs, so I came up with an imaginary setlist for a tour that never was.

Depeche Mode: A Broken Frame era

The album. The singles. The songs. The tour(s).