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| Photo Credit: AP. |
BERLIN (AP) — Depeche Mode have lined up a new album and the band’s first live shows in more than five years, an announcement that comes months after the death of founding member Andy “Fletch” Fletcher.
The band
said in Berlin on Tuesday that the album, “Memento Mori,” will be released next
spring. The accompanying tour will start with what’s billed as a “special,
limited series of North American arena dates” starting March 23, ahead of a
summer stadium tour in Europe.
Lead singer
Dave Gahan said he and fellow band mainstay Martin Gore started talking in
January about working on a new project together. Gore had been writing “for a
while, through the pandemic,” and came up with the title — Latin for “Remember
that you must die.”
“I liked
that immediately, just because it kinda felt like it was right for the imagery
that was already developing in the songs — that life can be so fleeting and
just be there and then gone the next minute,” Gahan told The Associated Press.
“Living or
not living, and what are we doing while we are living here, that’s ... kinda
what it’s about,” he said. “The album is going to take you on a little trip.”
Keyboardist
Fletcher was about to join the team in Santa Barbara, California, when he died
in May and didn’t get to hear any of the material, Gahan said.
“I’m sure he would have had a lot to say,” he
added. “Probably the first thing he would have said was, ‘Why are there so many
songs about death?’”
Fletcher
formed the group that would become giants of British electro-pop along with
fellow synthesizer players Gore and Vince Clarke, and Gahan, in Basildon,
England in 1980.
“I’m sure
that his absence in the studio in some way changes what we did, and that will
happen when we perform on stage as well,” Gahan said. “We have no intention of
replacing Fletch on stage. He did his own thing there.”
“Memento
Mori” will be Depeche Mode’s 15th studio album and the first since 2017′s
“Spirit.” What will come after that isn’t yet clear.
“I don’t
know what there is for us in the future,” Gahan said. “I never do. We never
really plan to do anything beyond what we’re doing in the moment.”
Next year’s
tour will take the band to New York’s Madison Square Garden, Chicago’s United
Center, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum and Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, among other
stops. In Europe, venues will include the Stade de France in Paris, Berlin’s
Olympic Stadium and London’s Twickenham Stadium.