Paper Monsters

Dave Gahan:
Paper Monsters

[Mute; 2003]
Rating: 6.9
I just had the weirdest revelation: Dave Gahan is Jewish. I've been listening to Depeche Mode for about 13 years now, alternating between fandom and bemusement, and the thought had never occured to me. But one look at Gahan's debut solo alubm (with its unmistakable, Viradon-toned Anton Corbijn cover photo), and I suddenly recognized a fellow son of Israel. It's a good photograph.

One of the premier prettyboys of the 80s, Gahan looks defiantly middle-aged here-- the jowls sag a bit, the corners of the mouth took a mournful turn downward. He looks like he should at this point: a man with 22 years' celebrity and six minutes of clinical death behind him. He also looks like a rather prototypical Jew.

Why the hell am I making a point of this? Well, it's quite indicative of the album's contents. Like many solo outings by career frontmen, Paper Monsters is autotherapeutic: Gahan wants to share something about himself. It's just another level of self-mythologizing, sure, but it does yield interesting information-- sometimes not in the ways intended.

The first thing we learn is that Dave doesn't really like synthesizers all that much. The most prominently featured instrument on Paper Monsters

is, oddly enough, slide guitar. Its presence here nears Bonnie Raitt levels, coating most solos and even providing ambient beds. The songs themselves, meanwhile, are two-thirds smoothly crooned ballads over one-third lacquered rock shuffles-- all closer to the digi-soul of Songs of Faith and Devotion than the IDM aspirations of Exciter. Fair enough: much like the Eurythmics, Depeche Mode were never a true electropop outfit. They were, and are, a gospel-tinged classic rock band that happened to favor au courant arrangements (as the legend goes, the boys switched to synths so as not to disturb neighbors during early rehearsals).

Gahan opens Monstersin full masochistic mode. "Dirty Sticky Floors" is both the album's designated hit single and its most humble moment: by the end of the first verse, the protagonist is already on the titular floor "praying over the porcelain throne." After two timid ballads in a row-- "Hold On" and "A Little Piece"-- Gahan is seized by another bout of picturesque wallowing. "Bottle Living" is a classic blues shuffle, not even transposed into a more British minor key (which "Personal Jesus" was). Over earnest guitars and low-moaning harmonica, Gahan roars "He's living for the bottle," evidently recalling his own adventures in alcoholism from the safe remove of the third person.

By the next song, "Black and Blue Again", Dave's confessions take on a tinge of a master-and-servant game: Gahan might, just might, get off on self-flagellation, with the audience as the unwitting dominator. Regardless, there's a great middle section that finds him belting, simply, "I'm not very nice" over a string crescendo. Gahan's vocal can still elevate the dumbest lyric to the level of a cathartic mantra, a skill that comes handy in the absence of Martin Gore.

"Stay" and "I Need You" are unfortunately not a two-part Lisa Loeb cover. The former is another simple, pretty ballad that brings the album's average BPM to about 90. Its chorus, once again, flirts with the pathetic: "Stay/ You can leave tomorrow" paints the singer as the whinier half of a fling. The latter toys with an inversion of that sentiment-- "you'll always need me much more than I need you," goes the lyric-- but the song still ends on a note of puppy-eyed yearning. Paper Monsters succeeds in revealing the "new" Dave Gahan, and that's what makes it a faintly embarrassing listen. Whatever the motives, it reduces a Don Juan to begging for a pity fuck.

- Michael Idov, July 25, 2003