For nearly four decades, Depeche Mode have majored in gloomy meditations on their own personal shortcomings. But their 14th LP offers a bitter, sorrowful elegy for the outside world. Nearly every song on Spirit laments the death of human decency, often in disarmingly beautiful ways (see the fuzzy ballad "Fail," the forlornly crooned Poison Heart"). They sometimes drift into heavy-handed
This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Review: Depeche Mode Back In ‘Violator’ Mode on 14th LP ‘Spirit’