Depeche Mode

The band's economical debut is all about Vince Clarke, who lends his love of Italian disco and Kraftwerk to these surprisingly warm pop songs. "Dreaming Of Me" and "Just Can't Get Enough" epitomize a certain innocence that crops up in the best of the early synth pop records of the 1980s. This would be their only record with Clarke, who would leave to form Yaz and Erasure.

"New Life" is worthy of Eno at his most rhapsodically technopastoral, but most of this tuneful pap crosses Meco (without the humble functionalism), Gary Numan (without the devotion to surface), and Kraftwerk (without the humor--oh, definitely without the humor). You'd think after seventy-five years people would have seen through the futurist fallacy--an infatuation with machinery is the ultimate one-sided love affair. But then, this isn't futurism--they call it pop. (Grade - C+)