![]() “I Need You” brings the tempo back up a notch after the sadness of “Stay”, and does it’s job well within the confines of the album, but alone it doesn’t stand out much… which makes me wonder the decision to make it one of the singles released from this album. However, the album loses it’s legs slightly (just like Dave’s used to… oh… bad joke) during the second half. ![]() It even sounds like Gahan gets ever so slightly choked up during certain moments of the song. “Black and Blue Again” is a hazy, bluesy sounding cut that takes the minimalist approach until breaking out into a brilliant cacophony of sounds while Dave growls “You said I’m not very nice./You see I’m not very nice.” And despite all the evils and bitterness mentioned on the album, “Stay” is by far the saddest track, and if it doesn’t at least bring a tear to your eye, you must be part of the Borg. It’s heavy, electronic blues groove, coupled with a shockingly good use of a harmonica in a rock song make it one of the standout tracks. But after three slow, sad, and emotive tracks, “Bottle Living” makes sure the listener stays awake by delivering a rage filled boot to the face. His singing is as good as ever, filled with sentiment in all the right places. “Hold On” and “A Little Piece” continue the theme, as Gahan recounts tales of fighting demons and the stark loneliness alcholism brings with it. Dave’s gasp of air at the end of this track is particularly unsettling, representing the moment he suddenly came back to life after lying (quite literally) dead for a few minutes. The lyrics aren’t exactly high-class poetry, but are instead blunt, most of the time very gloomy, getting directly to the point and not skirting around anything. “Dirty Sticky Floor”, and just about all of the songs on Paper Monsters deal with Dave’s well-known problems with booze and drugs. The album begins and immediately dumps the listener into the dark, cold, rain soaked alleys of the songwriter’s mind. I suppose the problem with that is you probably won’t like Dave Gahan’s solo work if you don’t already have a tolerance for Depeche Mode. That’s not watered down keep in mind… my opinion is that Paper Monsters is a rougher, low key translation of DM with a raw electronic sheen. ![]() Being the experienced musician and songwriter that Dave is, the album has no trouble finding it’s identity, which is almost like a stripped down version of Depeche Mode’s music. Paper Monsters is Dave Gahan’s solo debut. Besides, an album with ‘monsters’ in the title is bound to be bustling with scariness, right? We’ll find out what Bela Lugosi thinks later… Plus: documentary.Someone wanted me to review a Depeche Mode album, but this will have to do for now. There's word that another Mode album is coming up in the next year, but Gahan looks so comfortable with the crew on Live Monsters that it's safe to say he just might be better off sticking with them. Without any pre-programmed sequences, they make "A Question of Time" and "Personal Jesus" sound almost rockabilly, and deliver a brief, but frenetic, disco-funk workout in their version of "Never Let Me Down Again." The band (whose keyboardist here is the same Vincent Jones of the Grapes of Wrath) is just as forceful with Gahan's solo material and even more inventive when they perform alternative takes in the unplugged and jazzed-up segments of the DVD. Unsurprisingly, the peak moments are when Gahan takes on a handful of Mode classics and really rocks them out with his new band. That aside, the concert footage still has the same unfiltered honesty that our man delivers throughout his performance. Like DM's last few concert-videos, Live Monsters is shot in Paris and although the hall isn't stadium-size, it doesn't have the intimacy of the clubs Gahan performed at during the North American leg of his tour. The documentation on Live Monsters makes for a solid portrait, although it could have used a more original location. Dave Gahan's solo debut, Paper Monsters, didn't meet the high standards set by his 20-odd years of recording with Depeche Mode, but it did fare better onstage for the accompanying 2003 tour.
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