On the heels of releasing “Memento Mori” (translating to “remember, we must die”) their 15th studio album, Depeche Mode on its latest tour finds the British electro rock giants mired in the existentialism of life and death at a defining juncture. Yet, witnessing the two-hour, 23-song mega-show quickly becomes a beautiful, life-affirming display of a band that, 43 years in, still has so much left to give.
The atmosphere of the show — which touched down at United Center Wednesday night and marks the band’s first tour in five years — could best be summed up as one incredible, complicated eulogy: to fallen comrade Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher, one of the band’s founding members who died suddenly last year. And maybe also to Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein, who passed away earlier this month, and who first introduced Depeche Mode to the U.S. But in many ways the concert also commemorated the ending of one chapter and the rest and peace found in discovering a new beginning.
