Depeche Mode

Ultra
Mute / Mushroom, 1997

Depeche Mode's heavier-than-usual album Songs Of Faith And Devotion was their attempt to ride the early '90s grunge wave, and also their first to debut at number one in both the US and UK. The subsequent 14-month world tour left the band fucked. Not so much high and dry as just high: singer David Gahan's consumption of heroin had reached true rock-star levels and songwriter Martin Gore had a series of breakdowns.

If you'd had to pick it, the English synth-pop group weren't an obvious choice to end up as junk casualties. After all, they were hardly The Rolling Stones. They'd made their name in the '80s with a string of kooky electronic pop songs playing off the contrast between extrovert Gahan and the reclusive, perverted Gore, and appeared in music videos clad in embarrassing, pseudo-bondage leather outfits. Simply put, they looked like an early boy-band dressed in gay club attire. Their definitive album of the period, Violator, captured all the best and cringe-worthy worst of the decade's musical whims.

Anyway, when it came to making a come-back record a few years after the implosion caused by Songs Of Faith And Devotion, Gahan had to enrol in singing lessons to rebuild the emaciated vocal chords he'd let wither away through drug use. The result, Ultra, ended up being one of their best releases – despite a pretty lacklustre reception.

On it, the band didn't bother glossing over their problems. If anything, they confronted them head-on. "Whatever I've done, I've been staring down the barrel of a gun," was the first song's chorus – though it wasn't clear whether the line referred to Gahan's problems with drugs or Gore's generally tortured psyche, which was already common knowledge.

The whole album was dark and somewhat other-worldly. The instruments boomed and echoed and were occasionally punctuated with an eerie guitar or piano solo. It sounded incredibly lonely, but also warm – as if it had been dreamt up in an empty detox chamber before that one last hit of smack had worn off. Listening to it a decade after its release, Ultra seems much more visionary than, I think, most people realised at the time.