Memento Mori

***Memento Mori*** (stylized as "**Memento | Mori**" on the album cover) is the fifteenth studio album by Depeche Mode (stylized as "Depeche|Mode" on the album cover), released on March 24, 2023 through Columbia and Mute. The album was produced by James Ford. It was preceded by the single "Ghosts Again" and the track "My Cosmos Is Mine" (released on streaming platforms), and is the first Depeche Mode studio album to be released after the death of co-founder and keyboardist Andy Fletcher on May 26, 2022. The album is promoted by the Memento Mori World Tour.

## Background

On May 26, 2022 Andy Fletcher unexpectedly died, with the cause of death later being revealed to be aortic dissection. Although songwriting and demo work on the album began prior to Fletcher's death, Dave Gahan stated in an interview with *NME* that Fletcher did not record any material for the album.

In the same *NME* interview, Martin Gore also explained how Richard Butler ended up co-writing seven songs for the album. In April 2020, Butler reached out to Gore to write songs together. He sent some lyrics, Gore added the music, and they went back and forth.

Gore said the songs were too good to be a side project, and so Depeche Mode put them on the album although Butler was never going to join the band.

“Martin sent me about six songs, and Richard Butler was singing on a few of them,” Dave Gahan recalled. “I was like, ‘…The fuck is this?’ Then Martin explained that during COVID he and Richard had written some songs together. I don’t care who wrote them, but they were some great songs.”

In August 2022, a photo of Gore and Gahan in the studio was shared on social media, indicating they were in the studio working on new material.

On October 4, 2022, the band held a press conference in Berlin, announcing their upcoming album titled *Memento Mori* and a world tour to go along with it. The album is scheduled to be released "towards the end of March" 2023, which will coincide with the tour starting on March 23, 2023.

> "We started work on this project early in the pandemic, and its themes were directly inspired by that time. After Fletch's passing, we decided to continue as we're sure this is what he would have wanted, and that has really given the project an extra level of meaning." - Martin Gore on the creating process of the album, *Live Nation Entertainment*
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A description of the album appeared on the band's official website: "The album's 12 tracks chart a vast expansion of moods and textures, from its ominous opening to its closing resolve—running the gamut from paranoia and obsession to catharsis and joy, and hitting myriad points between". The full tracklist of 12 songs was also announced. On *Volt Magazin'*s website, it was confirmed that "Dave Gahan and Martin Gore said there were five finished tracks that didn't make it onto the long player."

## Releases

On February 3, 2023, the official Depeche Mode Twitter account announced Ghosts Again as the first single which was released on February 9, 2023 with its accompanying music video.

On March 9, 2023, My Cosmos Is Mine was released on streaming platforms to further promote the album. It was not released with an accompanying video.[*cit*

## Singles

* Ghosts Again - released on February 3, 2023
* My Cosmos Is Mine - released on March 9, 2023

## Live debuts

On February 11, 2023, the band debuted Ghosts Again live in Sanremo, Italy. On February 14, 2023, Wagging Tongue was debuted live in La Plaine-Saint-Denis, France. On February 19, 2023, "My Favourite Stranger" was debuted live in Munich, Germany at a special fan event.

## Reception

*Memento Mori* was acclaimed by critics on its release. The album received a score of 86 out of 100 from fourteen critics' reviews on review aggregator Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". At AnyDecentMusic?, which collects critical reviews from more than 50 media sources, the album scored 8.1 points out of 10, based on 11 professional reviews.

*The Guardian* gave it four out of five stars, writing "Gore's say-what-you-see lyrics are always best on the essentials of life – sex and death – and Ghosts Again is the pair's best single in aeons, a singalong meditation on mortality that's concise and powerful. Both are in fine voice. Gore's choirboy trills have never been richer than on Soul with Me, while Gahan ranges ever-restlessly from operatic to reptilian, the electro-pop Freddie Mercury. There's warmth in the album's fusion of industrial grind with delicate melody, and producer James Ford sparks a revivifying weirdness in songs such as My Cosmos Is Mine. For a record preoccupied by death, its big heart bursts with life."

Kory Grow of *Rolling Stone* praised the message of the album, stating "Acknowledging mortality defines much of *Memento Mori,* but it never feels heavy handed or even all that sullen. Some of the tracks even sound upbeat". He concluded, "As always with Depeche Mode, everything counts in large amounts, and on *Memonto Mori*, the stakes feel bigger than ever."

Cristina Jaleru of ABC News was also positive about the album stating "The 12 tracks are fully Depeche, fully intoxicating in sound, artistically evocative and sometimes puzzling (like the compelling but strange 'Caroline's Monkey'). The music is staring lovingly into the abyss and asking it to love it back; death is always hovering on the periphery of the sound, a grunge, industrial, rainy sound also filled with a strange kindness." and concluded. "Depeche Mode might be facing their own mortality but their power as musicians stretches into infinity."

*Ultimate Classic Rock* praised the album, favoring it to its predecessor *Spirit* stating "Depeche Mode's previous album, 2017's *Spirit*, suffered from some ill-fitting turns toward the political. There's little of that in *Memento Mori*. For the most part, this is classic band territory – moody goth draped in familiar lyrical subjects, now also informed by a world-stopping pandemic", but was critical on some tracks saying Don't Say You Love Me comes off like the result of a ChatGPT quest to write a Depeche Mode song, and Caroline's Monkey unsuccessfully juggles too many sounds and metaphors during its four-plus minutes."

## Tour

The album will be supported by the Memento Mori World Tour. The tour starts on March 23, 2023 in Sacramento, California and ends on December 15, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.

## Personnel

**Depeche Mode**

* Dave Gahan
* Martin L. Gore

**Additional musicians**

* James Ford – programming
* Marta Salogni – programming

**Technical**

* James Ford – production
* Marta Salogni – production, mixing, engineering
* Greg White – engineer assistance
* Francine Perry – engineer assistance
* Grace Banks – engineer assistance
* Adrian Hierholzer – vocal engineering
* Matt Colton – mastering

**Artwork**

* Anton Corbijn – cover, all visuals, art direction, design

## Charts

**Weekly charts**

Coming soon.

## Sources

* https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/depeche-mode-new-album-tour-memento-mori-1234604069/
* https://www.nme.com/news/music/depeche-mode-interview-dave-gahan-new-album-tour-memento-mori-andy-fletcher-3323355
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento\_Mori\_(Depeche\_Mode\_album)