Depeche Mode will come to the Videotron Center (April 9) and the Bell Center (April 12) without its founding member, Andy Fletcher, who died suddenly in May 2020 while writing his fifteenth album was already underway. Even in the title, death lurks on this paradoxically vigorous album, as if the outrage of the years had given survivors Dave Gahan and Martin Gore the urgency to accomplish great things before bowing out in their turn. It’s successful: inspired, researched in its atmospheres and sound textures (thanks to James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco and Marta Salogni, appointed directors), Memento Mori is by far the band’s most captivating album since Excite (2001). Dark and distressed on My Cosmos Is Mine opening (pleasant reminder of the solemn atmosphere of the classic Violator from 1990 which can also be found on Speak to Me in conclusion), melancholy and dancing everywhere else, with its classic synth timbres — let’s remember the perfect Ghosts Again at the start of the album — Depeche Mode becomes relevant again.
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