If you were just old enough to own a walkman in the eighties or the nineties, you might have been blasting some Depeche Mode tunes as you sullenly walked through the clinical corridors of your school. Many of those generation X-ers and Y-ers have replaced their portable cassette players with sleekly designed, state of the art audio toys from Bang & Olufsen. That Brit-chic band you grew up with also find themselves in a different place; the seminal electronic group have traded in their gloomy synth-pop for something more intimate and kosher. Though DM has never let more than five years pass without releasing a new record since 1981, I suspect many of their fans from the days before iTunes have shelved them along with their high school yearbooks. Perhaps, it’s time to renew your faith - all you professionals with your office desk jobs can feel current with the latest version of your teenage devotion.
In anticipation of Depeche Mode’s 13th full-length LP, Delta Machine (releasing on March 26), NPR has premiered an in-studio performance of “Heaven”. Here we see a soulful trio distant from the glamour of leather and voguish hairstyles.