Doublespeak - Doublespeak

Vince Clarke and Neil Arthur met around 1981, when Clarke's Depeche Mode toured with Arthur's Blancmange in support. They stayed friends for four decades without ever finishing a record together. In 2017, Arthur started sending Clarke a list of cover songs he wanted to hear rebuilt from scratch in analogue electronics. Seven years later, with Blancmange producer Benge completing the trio, that list became this album.

Eleven songs spanning four decades, none of them originals, and the selections are the whole point. The post-punk side runs from Fad Gadget's "Back to Nature," famously the second single ever issued on Mute, through The Sound's "I Can't Escape Myself" and a bleak, majestic take on Young Marble Giants' "Brand New Life." The pop monuments get dragged somewhere darker: ABBA's "The Visitors," David Essex's "Rock On" reworked into something close to doom, and a stripped-bare "Goodbye to Love" that lets the Carpenters' melancholy sit right at the front. Deeper still are cuts from The Magnetic Fields, Ed Dowie, Laptop, Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, and John Hartford's "Gentle on My Mind."

Arthur handles lead vocals throughout, his voice as commanding and as fragile as ever, while Clarke's synth lines and Benge's warm vintage electronics build the world underneath. Clarke deliberately avoided hearing several of the originals, treating them instead as new songs to remix into shape. The result is less a nostalgia trip than what the group calls a shadow autobiography of three lifelong listeners.