Both Depeche Mode and the Waterboys are back with equally improbable returns to form. They get there by recalling everything you loved about their work in the late 1980s.

With Depeche Mode’s forthcoming Delta Machine, David Gahan, Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore recall their greatest late-1980s successes. That they are largely no worse for the wear, in particular Gahan, is a wonder to behold.

We have scorching new jazz from Wayne Shorter for you, along with equally trenchant — and, yeah, loud — stuff from Richard Thompson and Lisa Loeb.

Four of this month’s reader-selected Top 10 items on Something Else! Reviews deal with Beatle-y things: Specifically, the times they whiffed as a group and as solo artists

Dimly foreboding, funereal in the most intriguing of ways, Depeche Mode’s new single “Heaven” moves with a delicious deliberateness. It’s all atmosphere, all feel, completely enveloping.

The only concert I’ve ever walked out of was Depeche Mode. This was during the Music For The Masses tour at the old Boston-area Great Woods shed. The primary reason was musical: just too much, uh … sameness

All hail the long-awaited return of the ass-kicking rebel chick Shirley Manson and her scraggly band of alterno-rockers in Garbage.