Nouvelle Vague dedicate an entire album to just one band: «A Date with Depeche Mode» reinterprets thirteen Depeche Mode songs with twelve voices, recorded between Rio de Janeiro and Paris
Nouvelle-Vague-A-Date-with-Depeche-Mode-album-2026.
Remaking Depeche Mode requires tact. You risk massacre, or uselessness.
The difficulty lies in entering those dark textures without mistaking them for atmosphere, and for the Nouvelle Vague the danger had a precise name: becoming the lounge that accompanies the aperitif.
Nouvelle Vague have been covering other people’s songs since 2004, when their first album brought post punk into bossa nova, and in over twenty years they have never slipped into kitsch. «A Date with Depeche Mode» dedicate an entire album to the repertoire of a single band. Thirteen songs, recorded first in Rio de Janeiro with Brazilian musicians and then in Paris, where keyboards, accordions and guitars arrived.
The result holds up. The arrangements bring together British new wave and jazz, with hints of tropicalism and bossa, and bend to the singer’s voice instead of covering it. There are a dozen voices, only one male: that of Larry Love from Alabama 3, in a duet with Skye Edwards from Morcheeba on Enjoy the Silence.
I always go back to A Question of Lust. Martin Gore sang it as an apology. Beth Hirsch, the voice of Air’s All I Need, makes a confession in a whisper.
The darkness remains, with a soft light on.
SCORE: 8.50
TO LISTEN NOW
Enjoy the Silence – A Question of Lust – Personal Jesus
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Nothing. Pure delight.
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