The 13th Depeche Mode album is foregrounded in blues and gospel influences that have often merely burbled beneath their synth-sad pop. "The angel of love was upon me/And, Lord, I felt so high," Dave Gahan growls on "Angel." Gahan was treated for cancer in 2009, and he and co-founder Martin Gore wrote together for the first time in their contentious 30-year plus career. Delta celebrates brooding faith and slippery solace without scrimping on Depeche's trademark blackstrobe punishment. When Gahan sings, "I'm coming for you like a junkie," on the plasticine stomper "Soothe My Soul," you can bet he's after the kind of personal Jesus you won't find in church.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."