Paper Monsters (+ Bonus DVD) (Limited Ed

After 22 illustrious years with Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan makes his solo debut with Paper Monsters. The album also marks Gahan's debut as a full-fledged songwriter, co-penning all 10 tracks with collaborator Knox Chandler. Mute.

The solo debut of Depeche Mode frontman David Gahan has been a long time coming, so you'd expect the album to be brimming with messy ideas formulated while Gahan was forced to sing Vince Clarke and Martin Gore songs while his own were filed away. Yet Paper Monsters is not the wild work of someone newly liberated. These songs feel as if they were written over a short period, rather than plucked from 20-year-worth of unrecorded tunes. There are basically three types of track here: powerful Depeche-style glam ("Dirty Sticky Floors," "Bottle Living"); quiet, urban mood music ("A Little Piece," "Bitter Apple," "Stay"); and rumbling industrial tracks ("Black and Blue Again," "Hidden Houses," "Goodbye"). Lyrically autobiographical, songs deal with Gahan's trouble with relationships and intoxicants and, though they lack Gore's sense of drama and perversity, they do have a maudlin charm. --Dominic Wills