Fashion is one of those things I'll just never understand. From Old Navy revisions of 70's clothing fads to icy, haute couture boutiques in upscale malls pushing $800 Chanel pocketbooks, it all seems a bit pointless; our culture's rabid materialism and hunger for the next big thing ensures style shifts every several months.

Depeche Mode are no strangers to fashion-- it's in their name. Over the course of 14 albums, they've often favored style over substance, occasionally stopping to strike an emotional chord along the way. But no one could accuse them of changing with musical fads and trends. If anything, they've remained more consistent in twenty years than almost any of their contemporaries. And now, in the age of the beat, they've even toned down the dance rhythms that powered their earlier work in favor of a more abstract direction, albeit one that still screams Depeche Mode.

It's taken Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, and Andrew Fletcher four years to follow up 1997's Ultra, but even with Björk producer Mark Bell on board, calling their new opus Exciter is kind of overstating it. From a production standpoint, the record sounds great, but at its core, it comes up empty, lacking a solid foundation of good songs to rest its adventurous studio trickery upon.

Longtime fans will still find a lot to like here: "Dream On" tempers rolling acoustic guitars with a bed of twitching, programmed beats and fractured synth samples, and Dave Gahan's rich, unaffected vocals. Even with a new sonic direction, the song feels like classic Depeche Mode, and would sit nicely alongside most of the material on their greatest hits compilations. "I Am You" is another standout, diving headlong into uncharted territory with some truly bizarre, high-pitched synth squeals surfacing in the chorus. This background serves to unsettle an otherwise comfortable environment, and its juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness is in tune with the Rephlex aesthetic.

Mark Bell's deft touch lends every moment of Exciter a certain glow of invention, but it's not all brilliant by any means. Every pretty girl gets something stuck in her teeth eventually, and these lyrics are a giant hunk of dark green spinach wedged between the incisors. The boys heap on enough lyrical dross to kill a high school goth. To view some of the most egregious offenses, let's briefly visit the Martin GORE Shop of Lyrical Horrors:

>From "Shine": "Put on your blindfold and a dress that's tight/ And come with me on a mystery night.../ Somebody has to shine for me/ It's difficult not to shine for me." >From "The Dead of Night": "We're the horniest boys/ With the corniest ploys/ Who take the easiest girls/ To our sleaziest worlds.../ We are the dead of night/ We're in the zombie room/ We're twilight's parasites/ With self-inflicted wounds."

>From "Freelove": "Hey girl/ You've got to take this moment/ Then let it slip away/ Let go of complicated feelings/ There's no price to pay.../ And I'm only here/ To bring you free love/ Let's make it clear/ That this is free love."

A visit like this could last a lot longer, but it would probably get pretty dull. Unfortunately, boredom is a prevailing mood when listening to the whole of Exciter. The first few times through, it's hard to stay invested past the fifth track, "The Dead of Night." The two instrumental interludes, "Lovetheme" and "Easy Tiger," are both rather unnecessary padding, and "Breathe," with its string of Biblical references, simply plods. "I Feel Loved" is the only track that appears to be aimed toward a dancefloor, though it plays more like the 5:00am comedown song the DJ spins to get you to leave.

The somewhat conventional ballad "Goodnight Lovers" brings the album to a reasonably engaging close with its warm synth patches and familiar chord progressions, but its lyrics concerning "soul sisters and soul brothers" feel forced. Depeche Mode and Mark Bell deserve a lot of credit for constructing the album's sounds from scratch, avoiding factory presets and rarely using the same sound combinations twice. The band should also be lauded for sticking to their guns after twenty years of falling in and out of fashion.

But despite the amazing range of sounds they've conjured, Exciter ultimately fails to interest. Too much of it drifts by unnoticed, and the songs themselves often form around a vacuous core of trite lyrical conceits. It's the most frustrating type of album there is-- one that's full of promise and shining moments, but never fully delivers. Add to this the fact that those shining moments stand out like volcanoes in Nebraska, and you get something that the fans should own, and the neophytes should steer clear of.

-Joe Tangari