Paper Monsters

After 22 years at the helm of Depeche Mode, it’s about time Dave Gahan got it together to make a solo album. Alcoholism and drug addiction are no excuses – many fine records have been made by hopeless junkies and, anyway, Mode released some of their very best work (Songs Of Faith And Devotion, Ultra) while the troubled singer was still permanently chained to the mirror and the razorblade.

Produced by Ken ‘Sigur Ros’ Thomas, all ten songs were written with his multi-instrumentalist friend Knox Chandler. Unsurprisingly the overall mood is fairly airy and ambient, but a couple of tracks – notably album opener ‘Dirty Sticky Floor’ and the bacchanalian ‘Bottle Living’ – pack a musical punch reminiscent of Mode at their angriest. His lyrics aren’t as sexually deviant as Gore’s – the only master and slave relationships dealt with here are between substances and abusers – but, while occasionally banal to the point of sounding alarmingly like pubescent poetry, still give an open and honest insight into the mind of a man who once had a $10,000 a day habit.

“Ask me what I want / Easy – that’s just more,” he sings on ‘Dirty Sticky Floor’, though it’s all so overblown that you suspect he’s secretly smiling at the cartoon character he was – sort of like Bono’s The Fly gone seriously wrong – before finally picking himself up and checking into rehab. Another regretful number ‘Black And Blue Living’ isn’t quite so tongue-in-cheek – when he sings, “You said I’m not very nice” you know that somebody probably did say it, and it really hurt to hear.

Elsewhere, when dealing with damaged personal relationships, the mood is intimate and the tone even more confessional. ‘A Little Piece’ and ‘Stay’ are beautiful tear-jerkers, showcasing the depth of his voice, if not his lyrical skills. ‘I Need You’ is a smooth piece of electro-pop and ‘Bruised Apples’ as hopeful and hummable as it gets (despite the embarrassing “pain” and “rain” couplet). Appropriately enough, ‘Goodbye’ is the final track – though it’s good enough to have you hoping he’ll be saying ‘Hello’ again pretty soon.