I felt like it had interesting textures on my first listen but otherwise it wasn’t all that.
14 (FINALLY). Spirit
Tracks 1-12 cover the original album.
Not much on Wikipedia:
Spirit received highly positive reviews from critics upon release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 74, based on 24 reviews. Spirit debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart, selling 23,658 units in its first week. It is their 17th top ten album in the UK. The following week, the album dropped out of the top 10 to number 17 with sales of 5,658. The album debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200, selling 64,000 album-equivalent units (62,000 in pure album sales).
6.8 on Pitchfork - “Spirit is Depeche Mode’s most pointedly topical album, but the synth giants still write universal, stadium-sized music. These songs make you feel like singing in response to today’s headlines.”
Looks like DiS never reviewed it but there was this interview a month before:
Score out of 5 for Spirit
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voters
Enjoyed this album mostly - could do with trimming a couple of tracks, but a return to form after the dull Delta Machine. Saw them twice on this tour - London Stadium and The O2. Still good live even in an enormodome…
1 Like
I need to listen to this again, from memory track 1 and Cover Me are the highlights. I saw them at the Barrowlands (6 Music Festival) on this tour, which I don’t think I’ll ever top, so probably won’t ever bother seeing them again.
1 Like
Spirit starts off well but just seems to leap off a cliff after the first few tracks for me and get really quite dull. Giving it another listen in case it sticks better.
Okay, I’ll leave the polls open but as of right now the scores are:
| Title | Votes | Score | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Violator | 29 | 4.69 | Post 89 |
| Songs of Faith and Devotion | 17 | 4.24 | Post 110 |
| Music for the Masses | 21 | 4.1 | Post 79 |
| Black Celebration | 19 | 4 | Post 61 |
| Ultra | 17 | 3.53 | Post 130 |
| Playing the Angel | 9 | 3.44 | Post 144 |
| Some Great Reward | 11 | 3.27 | Post 54 |
| Sounds of the Universe | 5 | 3.2 | Post 154 |
| Spirit | 7 | 3 | Post 162 |
| Construction Time Again | 15 | 2.93 | Post 48 |
| Exciter | 10 | 2.7 | Post 142 |
| Speak and Spell | 23 | 2.57 | Post 2 |
| A Broken Frame | 16 | 2.38 | Post 16 |
| Delta Machine | 5 | 2 | Post 159 |
And a chart showing number of votes (left axis) vs score (right axis)
(probably easier to see when you click on it)
10 Likes
3 Likes
Probably broadly the right order in fairness - well done hive mind…
3 Likes
Been on holiday so missed last few votes, but I think the results so far are as expected.
Gonna give ‘Delta machine’ a listen this afternoon - just to remind myself if it really is that bad!
2 Likes
Why are Depeche Mode not very good at Zoom and Teams calls?
Because they are always on Mute.
10 Likes
Been listening to DM’s albums this week - ‘Ultra’ is a fantastic album. Much, much better than I remembered. Can’t recall what score I gave it, maybe three - in which case, I was wrong.
6 Likes
I left them all open so you can just click “show vote”