“Goodbye” brings things back though, and is a good way to close the album, with a loud mess of guitars and drums fading out into oblivion. Perhaps tweaking the track order a little might have helped remedy this problem. “Hidden Houses” has some cool, trippy distorted guitar chords, but it just feels like the album’s zenith was already reached and we’re just coasting along to the end right now. “Bitter Apple” makes neat use of that scratchy, skipping record sound in the background, but it goes on for about two minutes too long. “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… Someone wanted me to review a Depeche Mode album, but this will have to do for now.

Dave gahan paper monsters album art